Quotes about Anxiety

So do not worry or be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will have worries and anxieties of its own. Sufficient for each day is its own trouble. MATTHEW 6:34

Every time a situation arises that could be stressful or would cause us to be anxious or worried, we have to renew our commitment to trust God instead.

Anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows, but only empties today of its strength. —Charles Spurgeon

That divine rest on the seventh day of creation has made clear (a) that YHWH is not a workaholic, (b) that YHWH is not anxious about the full functioning of creation, and (c) that the well-being of creation does not depend on endless work.

The conclusion affirmed by the narrative is that wherever YHWH governs as an alternative to Pharaoh, there the restfulness of YHWH effectively counters the restless anxiety of Pharaoh.

Our public life is largely premised on an exploitation of our common anxiety. The advertising of consumerism and the drives of the acquisitive society, like he serpent, seduce into believing there are securities apart from the reality of God.

As we go to the places where we are called by God—sometimes gladly, sometimes reluctantly, always in anxiety—we are drawn into the newness of God's future.

The conclusion affirmed by the narrative is that wherever YHWH governs as an alternative to Pharaoh, there the restfulness of YHWH effectively counters the restless anxiety of Pharaoh. In our own contemporary context of the rat race of anxiety, the celebration of Sabbath is an act of both resistance and alternative. It is resistance because it is a visible insistence that our lives are not defined by the production and consumption of commodity goods.

I have come to think that the fourth commandment on sabbath is the most difficult and most urgent of the commandments in our society, because it summons us to intent and conduct that defies the most elemental requirements of a commodity-propelled society that specializes in control and entertainment, bread and circuses … along with anxiety and violence.

They imagined that with a rightly honored commodity they could "purchase" security in a world that seemed devoid of the creator. "Godmaking" amid anxiety is a standard human procedure! But

Grief is an element of aliveness and the answer to the denial the market demands of us. It is an index of our humanity. It is proof of the presence of our relatedness to each other. It is a communal practice that recognizes that choosing the wilderness of vulnerability, mystery, and anxiety was a good and life-affirming choice.

The rat race of such predation and usurpation is a restlessness that issues inescapably in anxiety that is often at the edge of being unmanageable; when pursued vigorously enough, moreover, one is propelled to violence against the neighbor in eagerness for what properly belongs to the neighbor.