Humankind just may be the only one of Earth’s species that worries. Why? Because the human brain is able to conceive various, possible future scenarios: We are able to imagine the future. We are able to imagine the best; we are able to conceive of the worst. To our detriment, we imagine the worst a lot. We worry.
Adults worry a lot. In fact, in this day and time it seems that worry is an epidemic. People claim, “Things are bad all over and getting worse.” Perhaps we need to hear the Beatles sing again, “It’s getting better all the time;” but that doesn’t sell as much as fear.
Young people worry a lot. “What if the grown-ups can’t fix things? What if I can’t pay off my student loan (that no one should have given me in the first place)? What if I can never afford to buy a home?”
Irma Bombeck shared with us the things that children worry about. “What if my shoestring comes untied and someone says, ‘Your shoestring is untied. We’ll all watch while you tie it’? What if all the swings are taken? What do I do? What if the windows on the bus steam over and I won’t be able to tell when I get to my stop?”
Tim Alberta is a writer for The Atlantic and author of a recent blockbuster book, The Kingdom, The Power, and The Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism.
He was being interviewed on a podcast and the host was getting more disturbed by the minute.
Alberta stopped and counseled the host, “You’re getting way too worked up. It’s time for me to share one of my dad’s most profound theological insights into God and history.”
His dad, a lifelong evangelical pastor himself, who was often troubled by everything going on around him, nevertheless had his own unique way of spiritually grounding himself. He would often deadpan to his congregation, “God doesn’t bite his fingernails.”
God doesn’t worry about God’s world. God’s got this. God doesn’t pace up and down in front of the throne with a furrowed brow and wringing his hands. God doesn’t bite his fingernails. What an image: What a promise!
Psalm 46 proclaims as much: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore, we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea; though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult. The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.”
The late Jack Suggs was my seminary dean. Jack and his wife Ruth were once on vacation near Mammoth Lakes, California. They took a scenic drive up a mountain highway that went through Mammoth Pass.
After one bend in the road, the highway just seemed to disappear into the sky. It was a terrifying illusion. Jack pulled off the road and put on the parking break. He opened his car door and got out. Then he began walking up the incline to make sure the road continued.
While telling this story, Professor Suggs paused and said, “Of course I didn’t stop and get out of our car. I knew the California Highway Department would not make a road that went nowhere.” Neither has God given the world, our nation, our churches, or you or me a future that goes nowhere but toward what God wills to be fulfilled. No, God doesn’t bite his fingernails. And neither should we.
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