'Be careful for nothing.' I do not need to remind you--for I suppose
that we all know it--that that word 'careful,' in a great many places in
the New Testament, does not mean what, by the slow progress of change in
the significance of words, it has come to mean to-day; but it means what
it _should_ still mean, 'full of care,' and 'care' meant, not prudent
provision, forethought, the occupation of a man's common-sense with his
duty and his work and his circumstances, but it meant the thing which of
all others unfits a man most for such prudent provision, and that is,
the nervous irritation of a gnawing anxiety which, as the word in the
original means, tears the heart apart and makes a man quite incapable of
doing the wise thing, or seeing the wise thing to do, in the
circumstances. We all know that; so that I do not need to dwell upon it.
'Careful' here means neither more nor less than 'anxious.'
But I may just remind you how harm has been done, and good has been lost
and missed, by people reading that modern meaning into the word. It is
the same word which Christ employed in the exhortation 'Take no thought
for to-morrow.' It is a great pity that Christian people sometimes get
it into their heads that Christ prohibited what common-sense demands,
and what everybody practises. 'Taking thought for the morrow' is not
only our duty, but it is one of the distinctions which make us 'much
better than' the fowls of the air, that have no barns in which to store
against a day of need. But when our Lord said, 'Take no thought for the
morrow,' he did not mean 'Do not lay yourselves out to provide for
common necessities and duties,' but 'Do not fling yourselves into a
fever of anxiety, nor be too anxious to anticipate the "fashion of
uncertain evils."'
But even with that explanation, is it not like an unreachable ideal that
Paul puts forward here? 'Be anxious about nothing'--how can a man who
has to face the possibilities that we all have to face, and who knows
himself to be as weak to deal with them as we all are: how can he help
being anxious? There is no more complete waste of breath than those sage
and reverend advices which people give us, not to do the things, nor to
feel the emotions, which our position make absolutely inevitable and
almost involuntary. Here, for instance, is a man surrounded by all
manner of calamity and misfortune; and some well-meaning but foolish
friend comes to him, and, without giving him a single reason for the
advice, says, 'Cheer up! my friend.' Why should he cheer up? What is
there in his circumstances to induce him to fall into any other mood? Or
some unquestionable peril is staring him full in the face, coming
nearer and nearer to him, and some well-meaning, loose-tongued friend,
says to him, 'Do not be afraid!'--but he _ought_ to be afraid. That is
about all that worldly wisdom and morality have to say to us, when we
are in trouble and anxiety. 'Shut your eyes very hard, and make believe
very much, and you will not fear.' An impossible exhortation! Just as
well bid a ship in the Bay of Biscay not to rise and fall upon the wave,
but to keep an even keel. Just as well tell the willows in the river-bed
that they are not to bend when the wind blows, as come to me, and say to
me, 'Be careful about nothing.' Unless you have a great deal more than
that to say, I must be, and I ought to be, anxious, about a great many
things. Instead of anxiety being folly, it will be wisdom; and the folly
will consist in not opening our eyes to facts, and in not feeling
emotions that are appropriate to the facts which force themselves
against our eyeballs. Threadbare maxims, stale, musty old commonplaces
of unavailing consolation and impotent encouragement say to us, 'Do not
be anxious.' We try to stiffen our nerves and muscles in order to bear
the blow; or some of us, more basely still, get into a habit of
feather-headed levity, making no forecasts, nor seeing even what is
plainest before our eyes. But all that is of no use when once the hot
pincers of real trouble, impending or arrived, lay hold of our hearts.
Then of all idle expenditures of breath in the world there is none to
the wrung heart more idle and more painful than the one that says, Be
anxious about nothing.
II. So we turn to the only course that makes the apparent impossibility
possible.
Paul goes on to direct to the mode of feeling and action which will
give exemption from the else inevitable gnawing of anxious forethought.
He introduces his positive counsel with an eloquent 'But,' which implies
that what follows is the sure preservative against the temper which he
deprecates; 'But in everything by prayer and supplication, with
thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God.'
There are, then, these alternatives. If you do not like to take the one,
you are sure to have to take the other. There is only one way out of the
wood, and it is this which Paul expands in these last words of my text.
If a man does not pray about everything, he will be worried about most
things. If he does pray about everything, he will not be troubled beyond
what is good for him, about anything. So there are these alternatives;
and we have to make up our minds which of the two we are going to take.
The heart is never empty. If not full of God, it will be full of the
world, and of worldly care. Luther says somewhere that a man's heart is
like a couple of millstones; if you don't put something between them to
grind, they will grind each other. It is because God is not in our
hearts that the two stones rub the surface off one another. So the
victorious antagonist of anxiety is trust, and the only way to turn
gnawing care out of my heart and life is to usher God into it, and to
keep him resolutely in it.
'In everything.' If a thing is great enough to threaten to make me
anxious, it is great enough for me to talk to God about. If He and I are
on a friendly footing, the instinct of friendship will make me speak. If
so, how irrelevant and superficial seem to be discussions whether we
ought to pray about worldly things, or confine our prayers entirely to
spiritual and religious matters. Why! if God and I are on terms of
friendship and intimacy of communication, there will be no question as
to what I am to talk about to Him; I shall not be able to keep silent as
to anything that interests me. And we are not right with God unless we
have come to the point that entire openness of speech marks our
communications with Him, and that, as naturally as men, when they come
home from business, like to tell their wives and children what has
happened to them since they left home in the morning, so naturally we
talk to our Friend about everything that concerns us. 'In _everything_
let your requests be made known unto God.' That is the wise course,
because a multitude of little pimples may be quite as painful and
dangerous as a large ulcer. A cloud of gnats may put as much poison into
a man with their many stings as will a snake with its one bite. And if
we are not to get help from God by telling Him about little things,
there will be very little of our lives that we shall tell Him about at
all. For life is a mountain made up of minute flakes. The years are only
a collection of seconds. Every man's life is an aggregate of trifles.
'In _everything_ make your requests known.'
'By prayer'--that does not mean, as a superficial experience of religion
is apt to suppose it to mean, actual petition that follows. For a great
many of us, the only notion that we have of prayer is asking God to give
us something that we want. But there is a far higher region of communion
than that, in which the soul seeks and finds, and sits and gazes, and
aspiring possesses, and possessing aspires. Where there is no spoken
petition for anything affecting outward life, there may be the prayer of
contemplation such as the burning seraphs before the Throne do ever glow
with. The prayer of silent submission, in which the will bows itself
before God; the prayer of quiet trust, in which we do not so much seek
as cleave; the prayer of still fruition--these, in Paul's conception of
the true order, precede 'supplication.' And if we have such union with
God, by realising His presence, by aspiration after Himself, by trusting
Him and submission to Him, then we have the victorious antagonist of all
our anxieties, and the 'cares that infest the day shall fold their
tents' and 'silently steal away.' For if a man has that union with God
which is effected by such prayer as I have been speaking about, it gives
him a fixed point on which to rest amidst all perturbations. It is like
bringing a light into a chamber when thunder is growling outside, which
prevents the flashing of the lightning from being seen.
Years ago an ingenious inventor tried to build a vessel in such a
fashion as that the saloon for passengers should remain upon one level,
howsoever the hull might be tossed by waves. It was a failure, if I
remember rightly. But if we are thus joined to God, He will do for our
inmost hearts what the inventor tried to do with the chamber within his
ship. The hull may be buffeted, but the inmost chamber where the true
self sits will be kept level and unmoved. Brethren! prayer in the
highest sense, by which I mean the exercise of aspiration, trust,
submission--prayer will fight against and overcome all anxieties.
'By prayer and supplication.' Actual petition for the supply of present
wants is meant by 'supplication.' To ask for that supply will very often
be to get it. To tell God what I think I need goes a long way always to
bringing me the gift that I do need. If I have an anxiety which I am
ashamed to speak to Him, that silence is a sign that I ought not to
have it; and if I have a desire that I do not feel I can put into a
prayer, that feeling is a warning to me not to cherish such a desire.
There are many vague and oppressive anxieties that come and cast a
shadow over our hearts, that if we could once define, and put into plain
words, we should find that we vaguely fancied them a great deal larger
than they were, and that the shadow they flung was immensely longer than
the thing that flung it. Put your anxieties into definite speech. It
will reduce their proportions to your own apprehension very often.
Speaking them, even to a man who may be able to do little to help, eases
them wonderfully. Put them into definite speech to God; and there are
very few of them that will survive.
'By prayer and supplication with thanksgiving.' That thanksgiving is
always in place. If one only considers what he has from God, and
realises that whatever he has he has received from the hands of divine
love, thanksgiving is appropriate in any circumstances. Do you remember
when Paul was in gaol at the very city to which this letter went, with
his back bloody with the rod, and his feet fast in the stocks, how then
he and Silas 'prayed and sang praises to God.' Therefore the obedient
earthquake came and set them loose. Perhaps it was some reminiscence of
that night which moved him to say to the Church that knew the story--of
which perhaps the gaoler was still a member--'By prayer and supplication
with thanksgiving make your requests known unto God.'
One aching nerve can monopolise our attention and make us unconscious of
the health of all the rest of the body. So, a single sorrow or loss
obscures many mercies. We are like men who live in a narrow alley in
some city, with great buildings on either side, towering high above
their heads, and only a strip of sky visible. If we see up in that strip
a cloud, we complain and behave as if the whole heavens, right away
round the three hundred and sixty degrees of the horizon, were black
with tempest. But we see only a little strip, and there is a great deal
of blue in the sky; however, there may be a cloud in the patch that we
see above our heads, from the alley where we live. Everything, rightly
understood, that God sends to men is a cause of thanksgiving; therefore,
'in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your
requests be made known unto God.'
'Casting all your _anxieties_ upon him,' says Peter, 'for He'--not _is
anxious_; that dark cloud does not rise much above the earth--but, 'He
careth for you.' And that loving guardianship and tender care is the one
shield, armed with which we can smile at the poisoned darts of anxiety
which would else fester in our hearts and, perhaps, kill. 'Be careful
for nothing'--an impossibility unless 'in everything' we make 'our
requests known unto God.'