Don’t You
Worry, I Won’t Forget
Isaiah 49:8-16a
This passage begins with God speaking through
the prophet in a way that says, “All you people who have been scattered and are
hiding, step out into the light! There is
nothing to worry about. I, your God,
will never forget the promises that I have made to you. I am about to make all things new. Trust in me: step out into the light and take
my hand!”
What we hear is quite beautiful and
wonderfully reassuring.
But out of that comes a response that
immediately lets you know what the people think of this invitation to emerge:
‘But God’. I am sure that it is not the
response that God wants, but instead of becoming upset, God reaffirms. That reaffirmation provides an imagery which
shows just how a part of the Almighty we are.
The scripture reads this way:
Isaiah
49:8-16a
8 Thus says the Lord: In a time of favor I have answered you,
on a day of salvation I have helped you; I have kept you and given
you as a covenant to the people, to establish the land, to
apportion the desolate heritages; 9 saying to the prisoners,
“Come out,” to those who are in darkness, “Show yourselves.” They shall feed along the ways, on
all the bare heights shall be their pasture; 10 they shall
not hunger or thirst, neither scorching wind nor sun shall strike them
down, for he who has pity on them will lead them, and by springs
of water will guide them. 11 And I will turn all my mountains
into a road, and my highways shall be raised up. 12 Lo, these shall come from
far away, and lo, these from the north and from the west, and
these from the land of Syene. 13 Sing for joy, O heavens, and
exult, O earth; break forth, O mountains, into singing! For the Lord
has comforted his people, and will have compassion on his suffering ones. 14 But Zion said, “The Lord has forsaken me, my Lord has
forgotten me.” 15 Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no
compassion for the child of her womb?
Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. 16 See, I
have inscribed you on the palms of my hands.
This reading from Matthew builds off of this
commitment that God has toward each of us, and describes the sort of trust and
commitment that God is longing to have from each one of us. We are not supposed to place our trust in the
ways or the things of the world.
Instead, we are called to be utterly dependent on God.
Now many of us are able to consider such a
level of trust when things are going well in our lives. But what about when our
world is seemingly falling apart around us? What about then? Do we trust in God then,
or do we become more focused on trying to deal with everything that we are sure
is just over the horizon? Will we focus
on God or become overwhelmed by the worries of our lives as we see them? The scripture reads this way.
Matthew
6:24-34
24 “No one can serve two masters; for a slave
will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and
despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.
25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what
you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is
not life more than food, and the body more than
clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap
nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of
more value than they? 27 And can any of you by worrying add a single
hour to your span of life? 28 And why do you worry about clothing?
Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his
glory was not clothed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes
the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the
oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 31 Therefore
do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What
will we wear?’ 32 For it is the Gentiles
who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you
need all these things. 33 But strive first for the kingdom of God
and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 “So do not worry about
tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough
for today.
“Don’t You
Worry, I Won’t Forget”
This past week I got a call from a friend of
mine whom I haven’t spoken to in some time.
He called right around 9:05 so as soon as I heard his voice I knew that
he wanted to talk with me prior to really getting into the heart of his day. He’s one of those people who can be very
scheduled to the point that he gets over scheduled. So the fact that I was first out the gate, I
knew that whatever he was thinking about was important to him.
We started out with the normal pleasantries:
asking how the families are, trash talking about the sports teams we route for,
that sort of stuff.
Then he blindsided me.
He said, “My wife has served me with official
separation papers.” He kept talking but
at that moment I have no memory of what he said. He clearly got to a point where I was
supposed to reply in some way because after a moment of silence he said,
“you’re shocked.” All I could say was,
“I am. I don’t know what to say.”
He kept talking and I kept listening and
occasionally I would ask a question to clarify what I thought I heard. He was hurting; he was angry; he was so
sad. He was grasping for control. How that showed up was that he started to try
and figure out what he should do next, for tomorrow, for the rest of the week, for
the next few months.
He kept asking the question in several
different ways in regards to several different contexts, “What do I do?”, which morphed very quickly into, “I’m going to have to do
this in order to make sure that the other thing is taken care of.” In the midst of his search for control he
was worrying about everything and trying to lay out the next few months’ worth
of steps.
The counsel that I provided was this: “You
need to slow down and take your time. I
don’t know what the right steps are, but you need to slow down. Be with God.
You can’t figure out the rest of your life in the middle of chaos, so be
with God and be patient.”
That conversation was still echoing through
my heart and mind when I started to look at the scriptures for this
Sunday. So when I read the first half of
verse 34 in Matthew (‘Don’t worry about tomorrow’), I
thought for sure that was the direction that I was being led.
It’s one of those realities of being in
relationship with God that I absolutely believe in. This is not to say that I’ve always lived in
the midst of that reality.
The world can cause many worries, and
depending on the sort of personality that you have, those worries can either
motivate us to take control, cause us to become focused on the difficulties
that are sure to arise (as opposed to dealing with the worries that are there
because they seem too big to tackle on our own), or do some variation or
folding up into the fetal position because we can’t deal with any of it. But that message of, ‘don’t worry about tomorrow
because I am with you’ still stands.
However, a few days later when I was asked by
someone what I was talking about this morning, they paused after hearing my
response of “we shouldn’t worry about tomorrow.” The pause was long enough that I knew that
something was bouncing around in their head so I asked, “what?”
And they said, “But in order to prepare for
tomorrow you’ve got to make sure that you’re ready. You’ve got to figure out what comes
next. You’ve got to, at the very least,
think about tomorrow.” The subtext that
I heard was, ‘if you don’t, you’ll get swamped’.
So there I sat with the question of
‘why?’ Why should we not worry about
tomorrow? I didn’t have a great response
to the question.
Then I was provided an answer, which, in a
very God-led way, was in the other scripture lesson for this morning. At first, for whatever reason, it really
didn’t stand out to me.
At least not until Wednesday night, when
prior to the Classis exams the Rev. Fred Mueller talked about the last few
verses of the reading from Isaiah. They
read, “But Zion said, “The LORD has forsaken me, my Lord has forgotten me. Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show
no compassion for the child of her womb?
Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my
hands;”
In these verses the Israelites are speaking
out how their lives feel to them after so many of them have been sent into
exile while all those who are left, have to go into some sort of hiding
(sometimes figuratively and other times quite literally). They’re looking at their world and saying, “Why
should we trust you? You’ve left us and
forgotten us. We know this because our
world is just a mess. We look around and
all we see is chaos and rubble.”
Who among us haven’t had some variation of that
thought? Who among us hasn’t said to
ourselves if not out loud, “Where are you now God?”,
at which point, hearing no answer, we start scrambling for control, worrying
about everything, or shutting down.
That’s where the Israelites are emotionally. They’re saying, “God, why shouldn’t we worry
about tomorrow? You’re no longer here.”
But through the prophet, the people, and us
here today, receive an answer to the query of doubt.
God says, ‘You know what, in this lost and
broken world, even a mother may neglect and forget their child. I have not, nor will I ever, forget any of
you. You are and will always be a part of
me, to the point that your names are inscribed on my hands.” The way that Rev. Mueller described this
visual representation of a Spiritual truth, is that it’s like God has our name
tattooed on the palms of his hands.
As I heard that description and really let it
sink in, I began to have an answer for why we shouldn’t worry about tomorrow:
because in spite of the legitimate worries that do exist in our lives, God
always remembers us. And if God is with
us then we will be granted all that we need to make it through even the most
treacherous of days. This doesn’t mean
that we don’t plan for what is to come.
What it does mean is that all of our planning needs to be done with and
through God. That’s the time when we
slow down and offer up to God where we are, and where our difficulties
lie. In that slowing down God’s Spirit
is able to, at the very least, seep into the corners of our life and begin to
provide us direction. It doesn’t mean
that all of our worries disappear.
After all, what does it say in Matthew right
after Jesus says, ‘don’t worry about tomorrow?’
‘Tomorrow will have its own worries’.
But there is a difference between approaching
those worries by yourself and offering them up to a God who has promised to
always be with us so that God might direct us in the ways that we should go.
We were never intended to deal with the
weight of the world alone. Throughout
time, God has been reminding people over and over again just how important we
are to the Almighty, so that when the worries of a lost and broken world do
emerge, God works through us to take the necessary and appropriate steps.
But we have to slow down in order to allow
that grace and peace to be with us. We
need to have patience and lean on our faith to the point that we come to God
with those worries. If not, then who are
we leaning upon? Certainly not God and
when we’re not leaning upon God, that’s when we really start to be swallowed up
by the world. We need to be in
communication with God, which means that we need to be in prayer with God.
I started reading a book last night and one
of the illustrations that was spoken of was how an extremely well known and
influential theologian was becoming so overscheduled that his spiritual advisor
began to say, “the busier you become, the more you are
losing touch with God. You need to be
with God, yes to offer your cares and concerns but more importantly just to
listen.” The advisor told him to set up
a regular time every day that could not and would not be disturbed …for
anything.
Initially, the theologian recoiled at the
process, not because he didn’t recognize it as important or necessary, but
because his body was so used to the rush of go, go, go.
However, over time, his body recalibrated and
he began to slow down and in slowing down he was able to reconnect with his
Lord.
God needs to become the default as opposed to
the emergency measure. When this begins
to happen in our lives then we will no longer worry about tomorrow, because we
will always remember that God is with us today!
People of God, do not worry for God will
never forget!
After Sermon
Prayer
God, the worries of this world can wash over
us to the point that we really don’t know where to turn, because in the face of
such difficulties, we tend to think and act as if You
have forgotten us, or even abandoned us.
But this I so not the case. We are always with You
and if we trust You with the worries of today we will learn to not worry about
tomorrow because You will be guiding us.
God, help us to slow down so that Your presence
might be in our lives in every situation and occasion. It is in Jesus’ name that we do pray. Amen.