day no. 15,719: do not consume or be consumed by worry

Mathew 6:34
Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things

Do not consume or be consumed by worry

"Worry and anxiety are a waste of time. It doesn’t do any good anyway... You start living your life completely out of order. Worry is like thinking there is going to be a famine next year, and eating double portions at every meal now. It doesn’t work that way. 'Sufficient for the day is its own trouble' (MT. 6:34, NKJV) Worry is like a little greased piglet, and you are not going to able to catch it. And even if you did, what would you do with it then? Worry is not an adversary to be wrestled to the ground. Worry is not an adversary that you can just hit on the head with a chemical rock. Worry is a sin to be repented—as you would repent of lying, or adultery, or theft. You name it as sin, and offer it to Christ. And what does He do? He forgives it (1 John 1:9)" -- Douglas Wilson, The Sinfulness of Worry

Trying to solve tomorrow's problem with today's worry is like preparing for a marathon by spending more time on the couch for the fear of how much you'll be required to run next month. Worry exhausts your resources. It does not prepare you to endure future difficulty. In fact, it makes it harder. If you eat double portions of worry today in order to avoid a prophesied famine of tomorrow, you not only still end up experiencing the famine when it comes, but you invite additional disaster upon yourself right at this moment. Mass consumption of worry does not get you into the right kind of shape for fighting future battles. You actually end up depleting the very resources you will need to survive the future disaster by unnecessarily consuming them now. You also condition yourself  to consume more food than necessary exactly when you're about to have less food than you've ever had.