May 10

Anxious Thought

Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought. — Matt 6:25

Of course we are to take thought in a true sense. Why were we made with brains if we are not to think with them? It would be as if God bade us not to walk after He had given us feet, or not to talk after giving us tongues. We are to train our minds and to think with them, and think about the future too, laying plans with a long reach into the years before us. It is not forethought that is forbidden, but anxious thought, worry, fear. We shall see as we go on just what we are to do instead of being anxious. At present let us get the simple lesson that we are never to be anxious. This is not a rule with exceptions. It is not a bit of creed that will not work in life. It is a lesson that we are to strive to carry out in all our days, however full they may be of things calculated to distract us.

But why are we to take no thought? The “therefore” helps us to the answer: “Ye cannot serve God and mammon. Therefore take no thought.” So, then, taking thought seems to be serving mammon. We say we are God’s children, and yet when mammon seems in danger of failing us we get anxious. Practically, then we trust mammon more than we trust our Father. We feel safer when mammon’s abundance fills our hands than when mammon threatens to fail and we have only God. That is, we trust God and mammon. Anxiety about the supply of our needs is therefore distrust of our heavenly Father.

If we serve God only, we should not worry though we have not even bread for to-morrow; we should believe in our Father’s love. Money we may lose any day, for “riches make themselves wings; they fly away as an eagle toward heaven;” but we never can lose God. Nothing can rob us of His love, nor rob Him of the abundance He possesses from which to meet our needs. So if we trust God we ought never to be anxious, though we have nothing else.