Do You Worry?

IT'S no fun to worry all the time. Yet it sometimes seems easier to justify worrying than to stop doing it. ``I'm just a worrier'' has probably defeated many an effort to master the tendency to worry before the effort even got off the ground. There is, though, a healing response to worry. It's called trust -- not just a human trust in people or things, but trust in God, grounded in a solid spiritual understanding of God and His government of man.

An understanding of God is essential. A humanly positive attitude may or may not be better than pessimism in some circumstances, but we can't ignore our problems. They need to be solved. So we need spiritual understanding to undergird our hope, because this understanding enables us to prove that God really does govern us -- and there truly is no need to worry.

God is much more than many of us realize. He is not merely a benevolent but remote Being who has little influence on everyday affairs. As divine Spirit and Love, God is actually the divine Principle of all existence -- the source and supreme Ruler of everything real.

The term Principle, understood in Christian Science as a name for God, implies that God is constant and unchanging in His government of man. It means that everything real is established by God in accord with His goodness and perfection -- that God's law governs every detail of creation.

Underneath, worry is often fear -- the fear that God, good, is not in control. Worry can be quieted with trust as we love God more: acknowledge His goodness and ever-presence, understand His harmonious control over every facet of our being, and live in obedience to His commandments. Referring to God, the Bible says, ``Let all those that put their trust in thee rejoice: let them ever shout for joy, because thou defendest them: let them also that love thy name be joyful in thee.''1

Christ Jesus' life and teachings certainly pointed to devoted trust in God as a central element of Christianity. And he told Nicodemus that one must be ``born again''2 to understand God. For some of us, changing from worry to consistent faith in God may involve a virtual rebirth. But being born again spiritually isn't a huge, daunting leap -- it's a natural, step-by-step growth out of fear into fuller and deeper spiritual discernment.

Health is often a subject of worry, and it's one that calls for the gentle, yet powerful, healing Christ, Truth, that Jesus lived and proved. Christ reveals that man is actually spiritual, made in the likeness of Spirit, God; and therefore the quality of our true being expresses Spirit, not matter. In reality, then, health isn't a precarious material condition but is a changeless spiritual fact that is maintained by God. Through the rebirth Jesus spoke of, we gain in spiritual understanding as we learn to prove these facts in Christian healing.

Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered and founded Christian Science, writes: ``The new birth is not the work of a moment. It begins with moments, and goes on with years; moments of surrender to God, of childlike trust and joyful adoption of good; moments of self-abnegation, self-consecration, heaven-born hope, and spiritual love.''3

Whatever our concerns, whatever the difficulties facing us, there are healing solutions to be found in the spiritual truth of God, of how He made us, and of how He governs us. Through prayerfully discerning truth, and living what we understand, we can turn a life of worry into a happier, healthier life of prayer and habitual trust in good, in God.

1Psalms 5:11. 2See John 3:1-3. 3Miscellaneous Writings, p. 15.

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