"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life." These are the opening words to Jesus' teaching concerning worry in the 6th chapter of Matthew. I would like to tell you I don't worry, but that would not be true. I like to dress my worry up by calling it "concern" or by saying that I am "cautious", but in truth it is still worry. I worried about the weather Sunday night. My wife was scheduled to drive to Chattanooga early Monday morning and I was calculating all the possible options in my head. As it turned out she did not have to leave until later. Why did I worry I tell myself?
I go outside to clear the snow from the drive and decide to move my wife's car. As I turn the key I hear the sluggish moan of a dead battery. I open the hood and just as I suspected, I find a 5 year battery that lasted almost exactly 5 years. Those battery makers are amazing! Now my worry takes on another disguise, anger, or as I like to call it "frustration". Cold hands remove the battery after unhooking extra cables, removing the brace that runs across the top of it and then ever so gently snaking it out of its home. As I am removing the battery a neighbor drives by and stops to offer his help. I thank him, but assure him I have it under control. After all I am a man. Beyond that I am a frustrated man that is cold and ready to get this morning completed.
I secure a new battery, return home and very quickly have the car cranked and running as good as new. My wife heads off to work, I head off to Nashville to catch a plane. My oldest son now lives in Nashville and I call him on the way and we agree to meet and have a late lunch at a little place he likes on 21st Ave. I program the address in the GPS on my iPhone and I am soon there. We have a nice visit and as I walk back to my car I am aggrevated by the cold, the realization that my flight might be delayed and acutally still unhappy about my morning battery change and the $100 battery I had to buy. I get to the airport, secure my boarding pass and prepare to go through security. I am now a pretty savy flyer and I can very quickly prepare myself and my luggage to be screened very efficiently. As I work my way through the line, I watch as the people ahead of me fail miserably to follow the instructions of the TSA agents. I feel it beginning to grow inside me again. Here comes the frustration! I make it through in plenty of time and go to my gate. My flight is on time.
The next morning my phone rings as I am leaving the hotel room. It's my wife and I can tell from her voice something is wrong. The car that I put the new battery in now has a flat tire. We talk for a moment and I try to calm her and talk through the options. She decides to try to call someone in Chattanooga to come change her tire. I hang up realizing that at 7 am in the morning in 13 degree weather she is not going to have any luck. I go to my contact list and call a friend that works with me. He is about 30 minutes away and should be able to slip away from work to help my wife. I call and he says, "No problem. I will be on the way in 3 minutes."
Being away from home I call my younger son who is just home from college and ask him to find a place for my wife to get a set of tires that afternoon. That afternoon he meets his mom at the tire store and drives her home. She will use his car tomorrow.
This evening as I sit and think. I ask myself the question I should have asked two days ago, "Why are you worried?" Through some very minor inconveniences I have discovered the following:
1. I have a wonderful, resourceful wife.
2. I have a neighbor that offered to help on a cold morning when he could have driven right past me.
3. I have a good friend that was not at work, but was instead on vacation, however; he never mentioned that to me because he was only too happy to help me and my wife.
4. I have a great older son who rearranged his day to have a sandwich with his dad.
5. I have a great younger son that rose to the challenge of a situation and took care of his mom.
6. I have a good job that provides for my family.
7. I have money to buy a battery and a set of tires when I need them.
8. I have a warm home.
9. I have a phone with more memory than I do.
But most of all, I have a Savior that told me not to worry. And he told me why.
"Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?"
Read the rest of the story in Matthew 6:25 - 33
My job is not to worry. My job is to seek first His righteousness. In other words my job is to be more like Jesus. To live in this world and function in this world, but to continually seek a higher path...a higher road.
There is never a traffic jam on the higher road!
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