Xanthe Hancox

At last, when I could not wait any longer, I sent Timothy to find out about your faith. I hoped that Satan had not tempted you and made all our work useless.1 Thessalonians 3:5

I have a working theory about worry, and it goes like this: worry is the form that love takes when we don't know what to do next. In most cases, that means the reasons for our worry are not bad in and of themselves. You care about your husband or wife travelling at night, so you worry until they've made it home. You are concerned about your children working or travelling in other countries, because you can’t guarantee their safety. You don't want to see your friends approaching retirement lose their nest-egg, so you worry about the economy.

It is all very well-intentioned, but if we’re honest, this kind of worry is futile. Worry is perhaps the spiritual and mental equivalent of nervous pacing ‒ you wish you could do something, anything, to help a situation, but you can’t, so you worry. As a worrier myself, it is of great comfort to me to know that even Paul was susceptible to worry. He loved his old congregation, and cared about how they were doing, but realised that there was nothing he could do on his own to keep them from every danger. But at some point, he stopped stewing and sent his co-worker in the gospel, Timothy, to check in with the Church of Thessalonica.

And so, even if it turned out (as it did in the end) that he was all worked up and worried about nothing, Paul needed to send Timothy so that Paul could stop worrying and get back to his own work. Worrying is futile if we don’t do anything practical about it. And when we can’t do anything, we need to remember to let go, and let God. As Jesus taught us in Matthew 6, our Father knows what we need.

We also need to note that what kept Paul up at night was concern of the Thessalonians’ faith. What do you worry about most when you worry about others? Do you worry about their faith? Enough to do something practical about it?

Prayer: O Lord, we waste so much of ourselves in well-intentioned but needless worry. Teach me to be practical and to take action, and to ultimately trust you.  Remind me that the only thing really worth worrying about it is whether or not the people I love have accepted you as Lord and Saviour. Amen.