Good Reasons Not to Fret Over all the World’s Problems

This article is the second part of my series on Handling Stress.

As I mentioned in my last post, Psalm 37 has always been a huge inspiration to me when I am going through a hard time.

The very first two verses of Psalm 37 remind us not to fret because of the evil we see in the world. Evildoers will soon fade like the grass. All these problems and people are temporary. Life on earth is temporary.

I feel like this is God telling us to chill and to stop freaking out.

This is funny to me because honestly sometimes I have no chill. If something gets me upset, it gets me in full freak out. Of course, it is usually over something like a lost phone making me late. I hate being late.

So what are we supposed to do instead of freaking out?

The next verses in Psalm 37 tell us exactly what we should do. Ah, if only I could always do as I should…

“Trust in the Lord, and do good; dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness.

Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.

Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and he will act. He will bring forth your righteousness as the light and your justice as the noonday….”

Psalm 37: 3-5

Actually it goes on through many more verses to answer this question of what to do instead of flipping out. It is much too long to address it all in one little blog post on stress though. I will save the rest for the next post. For now let’s focus on this first part.

I am doing this whole series on handling stress because I need it so badly. These verses are exactly what I needed, and I hope they help you too.

The world tells us we have to fix everything for ourselves, makes lots of money, and do allll the things and do them beautifully. But God never said that.

In these verses, He said to trust in the Lord, do good, dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness.

I would much rather take a sigh of relief and see what happens when I leave it in God’s hands and go on about my business then sit around trying to solve all the problems myself.

Some seasons of life are not for doing alll the things and doing them well. You know? Some seasons are just for learning or growing or recovering.

I can no more fix American politics or foreign wars any more than I can affect whether or not the mailman comes on time today or not. So it isn’t worth fretting over.

I am not preaching apathy. Obviously, it is healthy to care about problems. However, fretting is a whole other level.

Fretting is when you are walking around wringing your hands and giving up hope because you feel like everything has gone to pot and the sky is falling. I call it “stress brain”. It is a level of panic, and you cannot even think straight when your brain is in stress mode.

Let me tell you, I can do some fretting.

It is not usually about world problems. No, no. I always choose to fret over completely ridiculous things, like making a wrong turn, which will make me late, or being late. Or I fret over plans going wrong or technology not working properly. Stupid stuff. I fret over stupid stuff.

But it never helps anything. When I fret, I always end up making poor “stress brain” decisions and getting on everyone else’s nerves. I need to paint myself a sign and hang it in my living room.

The sign should read, “April. Chill.” Or it could say, “Fret not. Trust in the Lord.”

So in conclusion, here are a few good reasons not to freak out, fret, or panic:

• Evildoers will soon fade like the grass.
• These problems don’t last forever.
• It’s all temporary.
• Trust in the Lord.
• Just keep doing good things.
• Live your life, and mind your business.
• Befriend faithfulness. Being faithful is 100 times better than being fretful. Make being faithful your new favorite.
• Commit your way to the Lord, and he will act.

So chill. God’s got this.