Today’s Trouble and Faith to Get Through

“Today’s trouble is enough for today.”

— Matthew 6:34b (NRSV)

I’ve always been an active person, with a passion for team sport, weight training, and more recently, cycling. Physical fitness is an important thing for me, and whenever I cannot exercise, perhaps for consecutive weeks, I start to get agitated within. I tend to need exercise not just for physical reasons, but for emotional regulation also.

But then there is the problem of injury, and, when there is the inability to exercise, it affects me psychologically. I will get anxious; worried that I won’t be able to maintain my fitness short-term, and worried also that I may not be able to exercise as I have in the future. Then I must remind myself not to get too far ahead of myself.

I have found by experience that the manifestation of an injury does change over days and weeks; there is confidence in recovery. This is just another way God proves faithful, when we consider the worries of the day the worries of the day.

We think things won’t get better, but inevitably they do, whether we worry or not.

Reminding Ourselves to Be Stayed in the Day

Being stayed in many things is not a good thing, like being stubborn when we should approach change with an open mind and heart.

But there are many things where we are blessed to be stayed. The simplest and most profound thing to be stayed in is the day; the moment. We have enough thought and concern for about 30 seconds, or perhaps two minutes. These are the limits of our conscious thinking.

I often wonder why God would have limited us these ways—to design us to only be able to think in deliberate, same, and focused ways for a very finite time period.

Could it be that God wanted us stayed in the moment?

Could it be a tell-tale, that, to accept human limits, and to rest in the Divine, is a good and appropriate thing?

Whenever we get overwhelmed emotionally, we could ask ourselves, “How much of the immediate or distant past or future is weighing on me?”

When we bring matters back to the moment, reminding ourselves that we can get through this moment, no matter what burdens us, we see God as faithful in achieving his ends in our momentary lives.

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Faith for the moment is the golden key to joy. Being stayed in the day—in its peculiar troubles—is manageable, but only just. God is seen faithful when we remain in the day.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.