Matthew 6:34 “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”
Someone once gave me a worry stone; it was a beautiful, smooth, polished gemstone in the shape of an oval with a thumb sized indentation. A well-meaning friend told me that when I begin to worry, I should take this stone out and hold it between my index finger and my thumb, and that I should rub the stone back and forth and it would help me relax. So essentially, I could channel all my worry into the stone, and my fears and anxieties would leave me. I threw it in my purse thinking that, sure, one day, I could try that, but honestly, that never happened. One day when I was cleaning out my purse, I took it out and put it in a drawer because I got tired of carrying around the extra weight of a rock in my bag. Hah. It wasn’t until much later that I found out worry stones are a part of a group of other stones that are used for crystal healing, meditation, and many other esoteric and eastern religion healing practices. Who knew? Even though this was not something I even considered would be beneficial to me, I remember distinctly one day when my son came home with a gift. It was a small leather bag containing polished rocks, and on the tag was a poem that said whenever he felt anxious or worried, he could reach for one of the stones and it would be like a pocket-sized security blanket that could absorb all of his negative feelings. As I thought about this bag of rocks, I considered all the people who possibly could believe that a rock might take away all of their fears and worries, and I couldn’t help but wonder, how that was working out for them.
The Bible says you are to, “Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you.” (1 Peter 5:7) The key phrase in this verse is, “because He cares for you.” It’s a good thing I had taught my son how to pray and how to come before the Lord whenever he was in fear or had worries, because I knew when he got that bag of rocks, it would be just that to him, a bag of shiny pretty stones. This bag of inordinate objects had no capability of caring for him, much less helping him to process through his anxiety. As believers, our Sovereign, Mighty, Holy God invites us to come before Him and cast all of our discontentment, our discouragement, our despair and our suffering on to Him and in return, He promises us that He will hear our prayer and He will heal our brokenness, our sorrow, our pain, our grief and take away all of our worries, our fears and our anxieties. He will give us His peace, His joy, His contentment, His encouragement and His Holy Spirit, who loves us and delights in us and desires all that God has intended for us.
This world is full of thoughts and ideologies that are constantly tugging at us and pulling us away from our Lord. The enemy of our soul will always try to compete with God for our attention and has for centuries attempted to create philosophies and precepts that are outright lies from the pit of hell. As a believer, I know how ridiculous it is for me to believe that focusing on a rock could possibly take away my worries, but honestly how many people do believe this? It was such an innocent gesture on behalf of a well-meaning friend that it never really occurred to me how skillfully deceptive Satan can be. Our God does not want us to worry about tomorrow, because worry and fear do not come from our Holy Father. He wants us to come to Him every morning and lay all our burdens at His feet and in turn, He will give us the peace we will need to get us through the day.
--Melody
