Daily Bread

Early this morning Joe padded into our room and announced to me that he was scared. I walked him back to his bed, prayed for him, and returned to my room to fall back asleep. After lying there for a while and feeling very little tiredness, however, I realized that perhaps the Lord was asking me to get up and spend time with Him. He is so kind to woo me to spend time with Him.

I spent time reading in Proverbs and while it was good reading, I kept having thoughts race through my mind of wondering how in the world the finances of life will be dealt with. Am I crazy? What is my next step going to be? Should I just go figure out some full-time job? What field? Do we stay in Tri-Cities? What about our sons? Anxiety and suspense were flooding in.

After telling the Lord my concerns and sharing my heart with Him, I picked up C.S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters (which I've decided to re-read). In the very part I read this morning (chaper VI), Screwtape writes this to Wormwood (keep in mind that the Enemy is God):

There is nothing like suspense and anxiety for barricading a human’s mind against the Enemy. He wants men to be concerned with what they do; our business is to keep them thinking about what will happen to them.

Your patient will, of course, have picked up the notion that he must submit with patience to the Enemy’s will. What the Enemy means by this is primarily that he should accept with patience the tribulation which has actually been dealt out to him – the present anxiety and suspense. It is about this that he is to say “Thy will be done.” And for the daily task of bearing this that the daily bread will be provided. It is your business to see that the patient never thinks of the present fear as his appointed cross but only of the things he is afraid of.

How timely this word is for me! I believe this dovetails with Luke 9:23 which says, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me." In an instant, the suspense and anxiety that was spinning my head and choking my heart transformed from fear-producing, paralyzing tools of the enemy into the object of my joy. These are the means by which I have the privilege of taking up my cross this day in order to follow Jesus!

I am sure I am not the only one wrestling with anxiety or suspense about life. Or perhaps you're struggling with some other tribulation. Whatever it is, we can joyfully call on the Giver of Daily Bread to provide us the faith and strength to bear this cross today. What a gloriously reassuring thought.