By Anxiety and pride are not frequently thought of as sister sins, but they are. You might not feel proud when overwhelmed with anxiety, but pride is the root of worry too. When you worry, you raise yourself up to the level of engaging with matters that are above your clearance level.
King David understood this. In a short, somewhat obscure prayer of his in the Scriptures, we find the confessions of a culprit of anxiety disorder.
O Lord, my heart is not lifted up;
Psalm 131
my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
too great and too marvelous for me.
But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother;
like a weaned child is my soul within me.
O Israel, hope in the Lord
from this time forth and forevermore.
David had much to worry about growing up, awaiting the kingdom, and then as the king of Israel for many years. This prayer of his became one of the Songs of Ascent – the list of songs sung as believers climbed the steep roads up to Jerusalem for the annual festivals.
It is a prayer-turned-song reminding believers that the fix for anxiety is acknowledging that some things are not our business to worry about, for we are lowly, only God is the Most High; the intricate worries of life are God’s domain, not ours.
Our duty is not to understand and orchestrate all things, but rather to calm and quiet our souls. Like a weaned child might not understand why the nutritious milk from his mother has been withheld, so we might not know why life twists and turns the way it does. But, again, like a weaned child with his mother, we still trust our Lord to provide all we need even if the normal ways are no longer available.
Might we, like David, exalt in our hope in the Lord with public confidence, using our own confessions as worriers to call those around us to hope in the Lord starting today and every day thereafter.