This year has been one of the toughest years of my life. In late 2023, I discovered that I had either total or near total blockages in three coronary arteries. (By the way, I highly recommend that you schedule a CT heart calcium scan, as a preventative measure. That scan uncovered my condition and saved my life, and it cost me only $ 100.00 out-of-pocket.) So in early 2024, I underwent back-to-back heart procedures. The second operation – a robotic double bypass surgery – took 12 hours, about three times the normal length. When I woke up in the ICU, the nurse told me: “They resuscitated you multiple times.” The next 5 months involved cardiac rehab, a traumatic fall, dental repair, and depression. To use the words of the psalmist, my foot was slipping. I’m glad to say that my wife and children rallied. Without them, I couldn’t have made it through. Also, God has been so good to me! Where anxiety was great, God’s reassurance was greater. After 3 months of part-time work, on October 1, I returned to full-time hospice chaplaincy. God has been faithful! With the psalmist, I can testify: “Your unfailing love supported me.”
And how about you? Has God given you a faith for anxious times? I’m not here saying that you should sell your house, put your affairs in order, buy a white robe and stand out on the hillside just waiting for Jesus to come. I’ll admit there are days when I think that surely the Lord must return soon. But most of the time, it’s not what I call the “macro” events but the “micro” ones that shake us. It’s not what makes the news on TV but what is happening in our everyday. It’s the unexpected bill, the car crash, the scary cancer diagnosis, or a dozen other events that make us say: “My foot is slipping!” In response, we’re tempted to lash out, to dump our frustration and anger on someone who just happens to be there at the wrong time. It’s such a human response, and we’ve all been there, done that, got the T-shirt. Yet somehow through the words of Psalm 94, God is calling us to a different path, a better response.
The Lord has never promised to exempt us from hardship and suffering, but God has promised to go through it with us.
He has promised to support us and love us with unfailing love, to ease our anxiety as we relinquish it to the Lord. So often, God will use our brothers and sisters in Christ to walk alongside us, to embody that love. Truth be told, independence is overrated. Interdependence – relying on God and on each other – is the way through. Aren’t you glad we’re not alone?
CONCLUSION
These are harsh days, and sometimes, we get the brunt of it. Rather than exact vengeance upon those who wrong us, ours is to relinquish our anger to God, to pray for those who mistreat us, as Jesus calls us to do. When our anxiety rises, and our feet are slipping, God says to us: “I’ve got you.” His love supports us and helps us through even the worst times, and he calls us to be instruments of that love to others. May God grant us this kind of faith for anxious times.
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Image credits
Young woman: Revaldi Tarnando, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Revenge: American Broadcasting Company, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Footballers: Ardfern, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Gregory Crofford 