As a new year begins we can be quick to start making plans for the months to come. For some this might be exciting, but for many others, like me, it often brings fear and anxiety. When we see other brimming with enthusiasm and opportunity, it can be easy to become overwhelmed. For those who are experiencing this, there is great comfort in the reality that God calls us to depend on him for each day.
New Years is one of my least favourite times of year. I don’t enjoy the anticipation, or the anti-climatic moment at which the clock ticks over into the new year and we discover, once again, that nothing has really changed. I’m also not a fan of resolutions or year-long goals. There is value in reflecting and even in looking ahead, but the beginning of the year often fills me with unease rather than excitement and opportunity. This is why I find a strange but real comfort in Bible verses like this one in Ecclesiastes:
What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”
Ecclesiastes 1:9
This may sound a little bleak or pessimistic at first reading, but this is actually a verse which can speak calm in the midst of anxiety. I do not know what my future holds, and the book of Ecclesiastes is honest about this. A later verse reads: “Since no one knows the future, who can tell someone else what is to come?” (Ecclesiastes 8:7) The pressure that comes with a new year and the fear of looking ahead aren’t quite as strong when I remember I have a God who is not surprised or unprepared, who is not constrained by time, and who is leading me through each month, and week, and day.
Each day has enough trouble of its own.
Matthew 6:34
So back to my title, a little grumpy maybe? There’s definitely some grumpiness for me to work through, but I don’t think these words speak of bitterness, I think they speak of peace, contentedness and trust in God. These words come from the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew. As Jesus addresses the crowds, he urges them to trust in the Heavenly Father who will provide for their needs.
“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? 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? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? … But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” ( Matthew 6:25-27, 33-34)
It just so happens, that as I was putting this blog together, our church had a sermon on these very verses: https://www.globe.church/resources/do-not-worry/. As I listened, it was good to be reminded that we can often worry about what we eat, drink and wear because we don’t think that they matter to God, and to find encouragement in the reality that we were created by God in his image, that our Heavenly Father cares dearly for us, and that our every day matters to God.
But let’s zone on in the last verse, “each day has enough trouble of its own.” In other versions the verse reads “sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof”, “the day has enough with his own grief”, “today’s trouble is enough for today” or “let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day.”
Each day holds any number of things that bring us worry, but God doesn’t call us to hold all of the worries for the next year, month or even week. Whilst there is definitely good in looking ahead, in making plans, the reality is that I don’t need to be ready to face this year because most of this year hasn’t happened yet. I don’t need to be ready to face tomorrow, because tomorrow God will give me what I need to face the day. I may not be ready to face the worries of the next day now, but that might be because God hasn’t yet given me what I need in order to do that. One interpretation emphasises this point: “God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.” (MSG) God will provide what we need when we need it, as we live for him one day at a time.
There are many things that make me feel overwhelmed, and there have been many, many times that I’ve sat awake at night, anxious about something the next day or week holds. Some days I need to take it hour by hour and some hours I need to take it minute by minute. It’s far easier to say this than to put it into practice, especially with clinical anxiety. But I like to hope I’m making progress, and there is great comfort in remembering that God knows my worries and that he provides what I need at the time I need it, maybe not in the way I expect, but he provides nonetheless.
Recently, I read Hope in an Anxious World by Helen Thorne (which I thoroughly recommend) and I wanted to share an extract that I found encouraging (page 73-75):
Back in the early chapters of the Old Testament we meet a people whose history was steeped in pain… They also, however, knew what it is to be rescued… It must have been an incredible series of events. They saw, first-hand, real, tangible evidence of God’s presence, power and leadership. They moved from being slaves to being free. And yet they still struggled to keep going. They struggled because there was another facet of God’s care that they had yet to grasp: his generous provision for his people day by day.
Just a month and a half after they had escaped from slavery, when hunger started to bit, they fell into all the same kinds of traps we do… How did God respond? Not in anger or exasperation. He simply gave them what they required – one day at a time. On Mondays, they had to go out to gather the food they needed and eat it. On Tuesdays, out they went again. Wednesdays too. Each day, they were given just what they required for that day. If they tried to stock up, it went rotten. God didn’t set up a system that enabled them to stockpile… He enacted a method of provision that meant they had to rely on him as he provided for them day after day after day.
God’s method of provision lives on. Each day he gives those who follow him exactly what they need to be able to live the day that he has set before them.
Trouble is, anxiety encourages us to look a long way ahead. We panic because we don’t have what we need to be able to get through next week’s job interview, next month’s operation, next year’s exam or some hypothetical crisis in the future. To which God says, No you don’t – not yet – but you will when you get there. I’ll give you what you need to live life in ways that honour me, at the time I know to be best. And you can trust me to keep that promise.
The Lilies of the Field 