Thought for the Day - Friday 26 February

Thought for Friday 26 February 2021 Philippians 4:6-7 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.   For three weeks before my driving test I couldn’t eat or sleep, I felt sick every day. Although I didn’t realise at the time, it was the thought of this test looming in the back of my mind. When the day came I didn’t think I could go through with it. However, I  managed, with God’s help, and passed. When I was coming up to the test I just wallowed in the worry, it was there every day, a burden I had to carry, to the extent that I could hardly think about anything else. Why didn’t I leave it in God’s hands? Who knows, maybe I had to learn the hard way. It’s not as if I wasn’t praying daily, I just didn’t even think of mentioning the test. I obviously preferred to make myself ill with the thought o f it. I do have to say that when it was over I did remember to thank God and wonder why I let myself sink into such a pit of anxiety when I should have known the release was with God. How much sleep do we lose, worrying about something in the future? How many times does that worry turn out to be as serious as we imagined? We just remove any joy we might have had in the preceding days, when we are constantly letting ourselves overthink what might happen. When we take our worry to God He takes the weight of it so that even when it does come to mind it doesn’t overpower us. We can then give our attention to the matters we need to deal with each day. When we pray for relief from our worry, God bears the weight of it so that we can think about it calmly while dealing with our day-to-day tasks. There is no need for us to be carrying a weight that God is willing to take from us.   Prayer Gracious Father Forgive us for the times when we are worried about something and think we can deal with it on our own, we think that it is too small to bother You with. Help us to realise that there is nothing in our lives that is too small for us to bring to You. We are your children, and You care about every aspect of our lives, large or small. Amen.