Thank you, Beth, for passing this wisdom on to me. From Frederick Buechner, Listening to Your Life (Originally published in Whistling in the Dark.)
***
“Have no anxiety about anything,”
Paul writes, who was evidently in prison at the time and with good reason to be
anxious about everything, “but in everything by prayer and supplication with
thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”
He does not deny that the worst things will happen finally to all of us,
as indeed he must have had a strong suspicion they were soon to happen to him.
He does not try to minimize them. He does not try to explain them away as God’s
will or God’s judgment or God’s method of testing our spiritual fiber. He
simply tells the Philippians that in spite of them – even in the thick of them
– they are to keep in constant touch with the One who unimaginably transcends
the worst things as he also unimaginably transcends the best.
“In everything,” Paul says, they are to keep on praying. Come Hell or
high water, they are to keep on asking, keep on thanking, above all keep on
making themselves known. He does not promise them that as a result they will be
delivered from the worst things any more than Jesus himself was delivered from
them. What he promises them instead is
that “the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts
and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
The worst things will surely happen no matter what – that is to be
understood – but beyond all our power to understand, he writes, we will have
peace both in heart and in mind.
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