that you will just have to hand over to God the things that are out of your control. There is no guarantee that this will get you to sleep, but it makes far better use of the boring, wakeful hours than letting anxiety spin out of control.
The second reason is that worrying shows a lack of faith in God’s ability to provide. Once again, Jesus’ version is wonderfully memorable: ‘If God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today, and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, how much more will he clothe you.’
| God of every living thing, I don’t ask you to blot out everything that makes me anxious. But I do ask for reassurance that you are very close to me in this worrisome world. Amen. |
Tell yourself, when you are full of anxiety, that this is what you are a Christian for. Moments like these! This is the time when people who have no faith have nothing to turn to. But in contrast, it is the time when all those minutes you have spent in prayer with God, added up over 709,560 hours, will strengthen you in a unique way. So assert at moments of high anxiety: ‘I may be worried, but in God I have something precious – and now is the time to call on it to sustain me.’
And the third reason: if you are a Christian, there is no need to be preoccupied with the same things that the rest of the world frets over: ‘Do not set your heart on what you will eat or drink; do not worry about it. For the pagan world runs after all such things.’
I remember the first time that the very different way Christians can think came home to me. While I worked in that warehouse all my friends were passing their driving tests and practising their negotiating skills by getting their parents to lend them a car on a Saturday night. I recall one of my friends coming out of my home and finding that, while his mother’s car was parked, someone had dented the wing. So there was great deal of worrying that evening, and I went with him in case breaking the news turned out to be traumatic. But his mother’s first words were: ‘It’s a thing, not a person. First of all tell me whether you are OK.’ And I can remember thinking, ‘Good grief! That’s how Christians prioritize matters. That’s not what I expected at all.’
It still stays with me, that happy memory. It’s one of the many, many reasons I now follow Jesus. The logic of his reassurance still speaks to me across 2,000 years (that’s 17,520,000 hours). God’s care for all I can see – flowers, birds, fields – gives me confidence for all I can’t see. He is at work in that as well. So master your worries!
| Be happy! Think back ten years. What age were you? What were the things that were worrying you most then? And what were you most worried about five years ago? And twelve months ago? What are your feelings today about the anxieties you had then? Now make a list of the things that worry you most now. Be frank with God about how you feel about them, and then wait to see whether God will be equally frank with you. |
Be Happy! Day 4
Get real about love
| If I speak in human or angelic tongues, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. 1 Corinthians 13.1–3 |
It’s just after Easter in Tenerife. I’m on holiday with my gorgeous godchildren and their family. Mum and Dad have gone to a meeting because some chav in a Primark suit is trying to sell them a timeshare. So I’ve had seven-year-old Anna and five-year-old William since breakfast. We’ve done the mini golf, we’ve done the swimming pool, and now we’re going for a walk along the beach. And a charming little voice floats up: ‘I do love you, Peter.’
I reply, ‘Oh what a lovely thing to say! I love you too. Both of you!’
There is a brief silence, and then I hear, ‘Have you noticed that the beach shop is selling chocolate ice creams?’
The little rascal – I nearly fell for it!
It gave me a problem, because Anna and William have a strict holiday rule about having only one ice cream per day. Anna is the biggest girl in her class, but William is a minute scrap for his age. When they are playing on the beach they look a comical pair. William doesn’t look like her brother; he looks like her lunch. So you can understand why Mum and Dad want to make sure they eat well and wisely. It makes me miserable to say no to such terrific children. But I think it is genuinely more loving to stick to the rule than to sneak in an extra Cornetto.
Sometimes we say I love you, and it has nothing to do with authentic love. Sometimes we say, ‘You can’t have what you want,’ and we do it because we love the person. Love is so complicated. We have got used to love having a price-tag attached to it. We expect something back.
| Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. 1 Corinthians 13.4–8 |
‘Love is complicated’ does not appear in the long list of facts about love that Paul wrote in one of his letters, twenty years after the life of Jesus. But it should have done!
Just like you can mistake ice cream for love, people seeking happiness are wide open to mistaking other things for love. So Paul wrote to his friends in Corinth about how you tell love – the real thing – from the ice cream versions. This is actually the subject of most chick flick movies. Teenagers could save themselves six quid and ninety minutes with Kirsten Dunst, and instead use Paul’s words as a checklist to find out what is going on with a girlfriend or boyfriend. Is what is happening in this relationship patient, or am I being pushed too far too fast? Is it self-seeking, or are both people preferring to seek each other’s happiness? Is the other person using this relationship to boast to friends? Or am I?
Well, if love involves any of those things it is not going to lead to lasting happiness. Paul knew that – twenty centuries before we had Sex and the City to tell us. ‘Love is patient, love is kind. It does not boast, it is not self-seeking.’
But Paul’s words are a practical guide for worshippers as well. He is very scornful of people whose highlight is to go to a church service because they like a good sing. Or a good sermon, or any kind of emotional high! These things are not, according to Paul, what being a Christian is about.
| Christ has made love the stairway that would enable all Christians to climb up to heaven. So hold fast to love in all sincerity. Give each other practical proof of it. And by your progress in it, make the ascent together. Fulgentius of Ruspe, bishop in North Africa, 468–533 |
And nor (and this is rather unsettling) is faith the most significant thing about a Christian life. I suspect Paul may have been thinking of that hard-nosed, intolerant kind of Christian faith that despises any other point of view except a particular version of the truth. The kind of faith that allows someone to give every last penny to a charity for converting the poor of Africa, but cuts off a family member because he or she has made a moral decision that doesn’t fit a particular version of the truth.
For all the good that kind of worship or that kind of faith does, you might as well stand in a corner and bang a gong. Or as he put it: ‘If I speak in human tongues or sing in angelic tongues, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have a faith that could move mountains, if I give all I possess to the poor, but have not love, I’m nothing.’
This is all a bit disconcerting. You hear the part of the Bible in which Paul wrote about love read at weddings. But, to be honest, you’re not really in the mood at a wedding to think troubling things about what it means to be a Christian. You just want the moment to be romantic and the best man not to drop the rings!
But