Worrying about what you cannot change

“Worry,” said E. Stanley Jones, “is the interest we pay on tomorrow’s troubles.” But it is more than that. Worry begins as a trickle, then erodes your energy and productivity, draining you of all creative abilities and possibilities.

In some cases, part of the solution is revamping your lifestyle, but in other situations – like raising five kids without a husband – you can’t quit or walk out. You’ve got to move on.

Most of our worries cluster around two major fears: What could happen and what has happened. In the days when he was a circuit-riding lawyer, Abraham Lincoln, accompanied by several colleagues, crossed several rivers swollen by spring rains. Ahead, though, was the big one – the Fox River, and it worried them. “If we are having trouble getting across these, how are we going to get across that one?” they reasoned.

That evening they stopped at the log cabin of a settler. The man had crossed the dangerous Fox River many times. Learning this, Lincoln’s group probed the man about the river.

“I know all about the Fox River,” he told them, adding, “I have crossed it often and understand it well. But I have one fixed rule with regard to the Fox River: I never cross it till I reach it.

When you are where God wants you to be and you know that He is your Shepherd who will take you across the river and through the dark valley, you can let Him take the night shift, and go to sleep. Make it a practice to never cross the river until you get there.

Today Counts is available in bookstores nationwide. For more information, write to Guidelines Philippines, Box 4000, Makati;

e-mail [email protected]; website www.guidelines.org.