Tomorrow Will Worry About Itself

Life is really busy sometimes.

That sounds like a simple statement to say — because it’s true! But what does busy mean? I often wonder this when I speak with friends or family, or even if I respond to someone's curiosity about my own life. “Well, it’s been busy. I’m tired. How are you?

For me, being busy can mean a lot of things. Maybe a very

Jenny Shotwell

“So don’t worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow will worry about itself. 
 Each day has enough trouble of its own.”  full schedule with many activities and events that I have to be at in a period of time. Or maybe it’s busy in my mind — a long to-do list (that will maybe get done) or the endless emails or scheduling that need to be handled. Or perhaps it’s just the never-ending “I wish I had time for” list that sometimes occupies my head and makes me feel busy. Whatever it might be, sometimes life is really busy.

Lately, I have been noticing my tendency to find chaos in the latter, wishing I had time for things, feeling like I’m lagging in my ability to simply stop and live and enrich my life outside of the necessities. “I wish I had time to bake cookies with my kids, I wish I had time to go for a quiet hike by myself, I wish I had time to sit at the piano and play for pleasure not for work, I wish I wish I wish”. In other words, I create a sense of busyness in my mind out of those things I cannot find time for instead of simply living in the day and time I am in.

Each night I spend a little time with each of my kids before they go to bed. My nine-year-old son, Clark, has a book that I occasionally read from to him, called “The Jesus Storybook Bible”. This particular night I chose to read the chapter entitled, “The Singer” which was all about the Sermon on the Mount. After reading the chapter, we opened his Bible to a few of the passages from Matthew of Jesus preaching this same sermon. I read specifically through Matthew 6:25-34, where Jesus talks about worrying and how futile it is to do so. After all, he takes care of the wildflowers and the birds, why wouldn’t he take care of you?

While that whole passage is so wonderful, the one verse that really stuck out to me this time was Verse 34:
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“So don’t worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow will worry about itself.
Each day has enough trouble of its own.”
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Isn’t that so true?!? I felt like I should probably put that on my wall to read every day!

Life is truly busy, there is no question about that. I wonder though — what would happen if we could set aside our worry and our endless list of things we wish we could do, or feel guilty about not having time for, and focus only on our day and tasks at hand? Would we have a better perspective on being busy?

I wonder if we could take our list of guilts and wishes and turn them into hope. Hope for our future, joy for what may come, and confidence that, as Jesus says, “Tomorrow will worry about itself”.

In His Name, Jenny