Don’t get ahead of God’s graces

Are you borrowing worries and anxieties from tomorrow and bringing them into today?

I often do that. You, too?

It must be a common practice for it’s mentioned in the Bible (Matthew 6). Will my health be compromised? Will the money last? Will health care or immigration policies affect me or those I love?

One of my pet peeves is how the television weather is often forecast. It seems like every weather event is the worst it’s ever been or going to be! If it’s sunny, we need more sunblock. If it’s raining, we should be on guard for hydroplaning. If it’s cold precipitation, we need to watch for black ice. I am convinced that the true purpose of weather forecasting is to scare us to death so we’ll never go out! We couldn’t possibly!  It’s far too dangerous!

The same type of news comes about the stock market or taxes or interest rates or how we’re raising our children. If we don’t have enough to worry or be anxious about just watch a little TV. Sometimes, the projections are true; sometimes they are not. In either case, is there very much we can do in advance? Not often. The best we can do is let events unfold and respond as best we can. And here I purposely used the word respondrather than react…but that could be a topic for an additional blog post on another day.

I was recently blessed in the hearing of a quote attributed to St. Ignatius: “Don’t get ahead of God’s graces.”  God’s grace existed in the past. It is present now. Is there any reason to believe it won’t be in the future? The anxieties of tomorrow will be met by God’s graces—of tomorrow.

“Don’t get ahead of God’s graces.”

The Rev. Mark Wimmer, MBA
Vice President for Church Relations
Diakon Lutheran Social Ministries

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