In his helpful book God’s Light on Dark Clouds, Theodore Culyer described the sin of anxiety in striking ways. In a chapter on keeping short views (i.e. not looking too far ahead, or beyond the day), Cuyler turns to our Savior’s words about anxiety in the Sermon on the Mount: “And who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life?” (Matt. 6:27). Here are a few of Cuyler’s helpful reflections:
“Worry is not only a sin against God, it is a sin against ourselves. It sometimes amounts to a slow suicide. Thousands have shortened their lives by it, and millions have made their lives bitter by dropping this gall into their souls every day.”
“God never has built a Christian strong enough to stand the strain of present duties and all the tons of tomorrow’s duties and sufferings piled upon the top of them.”
“This perverse spirit of worry runs off and gathers some anticipated troubles and throws them into the cup of mercies and turns them to vinegar.”
“If your children cluster around your table, enjoy them, train them, trust them to God, without racking yourself with a dread that the little ones may some time be carried off by the scarlet fever, or the older ones may yet be ill married or may fall into disgrace. Faith carries present loads and meets present assaults and feeds on present promises, and commits the future to a faithful God.”
“Some of us, at the beginning of a year’s work, are tempted to overload ourselves with the anticipation of how much we have to do; we need not worry if we will only remember that during the whole year there will be only one working day, and that is—today. Sufficient to each day is the labour thereof.”
“Let us not climb the high wall till we get to it, or fight the battle till it opens, or shed tears over sorrows that may never come, or lose the joys and blessings that we have, by the sinful fear that God will take them away from us. We need all our strength and all the grace God can give us for today’s burdens and today’s battle.”
I hope Cuyler’s meditations will encourage you to take “short views.” Some of us are long-viewed…and so we cower among the baggage when God has outfitted us most abundantly for today’s battle.