Worry

Daily writing prompt

How do you waste the most time every day?

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That’s a very easy question for me to answer. I waste time when I ruminate on things I shouldn’t think about. I can’t say that I’ve managed to solve that problem, but there are ways to avoid it. I can focus on what I really do need to address. I can keep my mind busy. They say that the devil makes work for idle hands. Perhaps the same can be said for idle minds.

And of course, there’s mindfulness. Some Christians are a bit suspicious of meditation techniques. They worry that if you empty your mind, the devil will come in. But mindfulness isn’t about emptying the mind. Mindfulness is about training yourself to shift focus to something very simple instead of wearing yourself out mentally. Even people who don’t know about mindfulness sometimes might accidentally discover its merits. For example, I get great help from playing the guitar. Because I’m focusing on playing, my mind isn’t ruminating on unpleasant thoughts and on solving problems that I don’t need to solve. And mindfulness is simple. You don’t need to become a Buddhist to benefit from its practices. You could simply ask Microsoft Copilot or your preferred AI tool about exercises. For example:

• How do you do a body scan exercise?
• List 10 tips on mindfulness
• What is meant by feeling tone meditation?

Why didn’t Jesus teach us all this? Well, I would see it as part of God’s common grace. We are equipped to learn about life and discover helps for physical and mental health. Such things can be discovered in all cultures and by people of all religions. We don’t need it to be in the Bible. And in some ways, mindfulness probably addresses issues that are more prevalent in the modern world. It may be that people didn’t have the same issues with mental health in the past. But Jesus does mention worry:

Matt 6:25-27
²⁵ “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? ²⁶ 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? ²⁷ Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

I don’t think that Jesus is saying that we can just sit back and be lazy. After all, the birds of the air do need to work to get food, build nests and so on. But animals don’t waste their mental efforts on worrying about the future the way humans do. And I assume that they don’t develop grudges against each other and spend hours thinking of all the injustices that have been done to them 😀.

So, I need to be aware that I do waste time on worry. And I do need to address this on a daily basis. I must admit, I don’t practice mindfulness much. I prefer to play my guitar. But I like to have these tools as my disposal. I mightn’t always have my guitar with me.

Sometimes Christians say that instead of mindfulness meditation, you should meditate on Jesus. But these are different things. It’s a little like saying, instead of going fishing, you should go out and fish for souls (evangelize). You can do both. And people might say, that you should just pray instead. Again, you can do both. And in some ways, they are related. A lot of people find help by bringing their anxieties to Jesus.

But when you pray and start thinking about all that’s wrong in your life or in the world, that can very easily become a launching pad for a long session of worry and rumination. The whole idea is that you hand your burden over to God. That’s why these hymns include the following lines:

No other friend so swift to help you,
No other friend so quick to hear,
No other place to leave your burden,
No other one to hear your prayer.

O what peace we often forfeit,
O what needless pain we bear,
All because we do not carry
Everything to God in prayer!

And of course, like mindfulness, it’s not about being perfect but about practice. In both cases, it’s about developing helpful habits. But the great thing about prayer is that God himself is at work. And, when you meditate, you could begin by asking God’s help and pray that God will help you to help yourself. It might all be a life-long battle, but, like the Apostle Paul, you”ll eventually finish the race.

2 Tim 4:7-8
⁷ I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. ⁸ Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.