STRESSED ABOUT BEING STRESSED?

Jesus was asking a rhetorical question.

Worrying doesn’t add any length to our life, nor can it make us taller—as an alternative version of this verse puts it. In fact, quite the opposite is true; worry tends to grind us down, wear us out, and can have significant negative effects on our well-being.

Today, we might talk more about stress than worry, but they are much the same in this context. When worry and stress come to dominate our lives, we find it difficult to live well. A little or occasional stress is a natural and inevitable part of our lives, but chronic stress becomes a threat to our health. Worry and stress can also have a compounding effect, meaning that the more we worry, the more worried we can become about being worried.

“Stress and worry seem to come too easy to us. A fascinating recent study has shown that, while stress affects our health, it is worse for people who believe that stress is damaging. The takeaway message is that how we think about stress matters and stressing about being stressed makes things worse!”* Accordingly, Jesus was not trying to make us feel guilty about being worried, adding an extra layer of anxiety to our already-stressed lives.

Instead, He was offering what might sound like a “merely” spiritual solution, but it is actually the ultimate stress-management plan, both spiritually and practically: “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Matthew 6:33). We don’t have to be worried about being worried, because as citizens of His kingdom we live with different priorities, and we can choose to entrust our worries to Him.

* Darren Morton, Live More Happy (Warburton, Victoria, Australia: Signs Publishing Company, 2017), 134.