My mind is like active radar. It’s continually sweeping the landscape looking for incoming thought traffic. It never stops identifying various thought-blips.
Some blips get identified as non-threatening and are allowed to pass through my mind-space unchallenged. It’s going to be sunny today. Michael Phelps won another gold medal. My lone tomato plant is dying after producing only two tomatoes. These kinds of thoughts are nothing to worry about, so my mind let’s them fly through onto their destination.
Other, more troublesome thoughts, are identified as potential threats and set off alarms. The mind then goes to work identifying the seriousness of the threat. It looks like this:
That medical bill is due on the 1st. Do I have enough to pay it? That other bill is due, too. How am I going to pay those? My budget isn’t balancing. How can I generate more income? What if I got a second job? Is there some way for me to make more money on the side? I don’t see how this is going to work. How can I make this work? Let me figure this out. I can’t figure this out. How am I going to pay these bills? How could I make more money?
Every thought-blip must be identified, analyzed and tracked until it clears my mind-space. The real problem comes when some of them keep circling. The resources required to stay on top of all of them can be overwhelming. Joy and peace are the first casualties.
I don’t think the problem is the number of blips my radar is picking up. That probably can’t be avoided. The problem is the number of thoughts that get identified as threats. It’s a software issue. I need to manually override the default settings.
Financial problem? Conflict in a relationship? Bad report from the doctor? Overwhelmed at work? Worried about losing a job? Jesus said to be anxious about nothing. He said to not worry. He said not to be afraid. Instead, He said to trust Him.
He sees every blip. Nothing gets past Him. He is more than able to escort thoughts through my mind-space or shoot them down if necessary. No alarm bells needed. Not necessary to scramble my own fighters. He’s in control.
What if I was able to take my eyes off the radar and rest, knowing He’s got it all under control and won’t allow enemy intruders to reach me? What if all that mental energy was re-focused on Him? No more multiple-blip tracking. No more alarms. No more devoting major resources to analyzing threat levels.
Just peace and quiet as a result of believing Him.