Do worries keep you up at night?  Maybe you need to get yourself a Sorgenfresser!  Sorgenfresser is a German word that means “worry eater”, and it’s also a collection of little toys for children.  Listen to this claim on the Sorgenfresser website:  When night falls and we are snuggled up in our beds, we close our eyes and drift off into a fantastical world of wondrous dreams. However, sometimes, this dream world is invaded by something ominous, something that isn’t so wonderful, a nightmare!  No need to fear! SORGENFRESSER are here! SORGENFRESSER are your own personal worry eaters – literally! Feed your SORGENFRESSER with your concerns and in no time at all they will be chewed up never to bother you again!

I received my Sorgenfresser as a gift several years ago from my friend Cindy, who has spent a lot of time in Germany.  These little guys are very popular there, and are now widely available in the US.  You just write or draw your worries on a little piece of paper, and feed them to your Sorgenfresser.  What do you think?  Can this little toy take away your worries for good?

I also brought a set of Guatemalan worry dolls to show you.  I got these from Ten Thousand Villages.  According to Guatemalan legend, worry dolls provide a way to ease our fears and anxieties.  Before a person goes to bed at night, they tell each doll a worry or fear and then tuck the dolls under their pillow.  While the person sleeps, the dolls take all their worries away!  The set comes with ten dolls to help with all of life’s worries.

I don’t know.  Ten worry dolls might not be enough.  We’ve got worries about big issues like inflation, climate change, increasing tensions with Russia and Ukraine, gun violence, and the pandemic; we’ve got personal worries about our finances and health; we’ve got worries about the well-being of our family members and friends; we might even be worried about our dog or cat or our car!  There is no shortage of things to worry about.  I’ve tried feeding my worries to my Sorgenfresser.  I’ve tried talking to my worry dolls.  Doing this has brought me some temporary relief—I can’t help but laugh when I think about a toy that eats worries.  But they are not a cure for worry.

And maybe that is because, on some level, we don’t want to be cured.  We get a certain amount of comfort from our worries.  I was thinking of the old Simon and Garfunkel song, “The Sound of Silence”, which begins, “Hello darkness my old friend…”  For some of us, worry is like an old friend, a familiar face that pops in when life is particularly stressful.  Worry knows all about us, and like our oldest friends, knows when we are most vulnerable.  But unlike most old friends, worry is not very helpful!  Instead of easing our discomfort, worry usually makes things worse.

Usually—but not always.  Sometimes worry can be productive.  I remember going to a buffet once and noticing the cans of sterno under the pans of food.  I was amazed at how a little flame could keep the whole pan of food warm.  But there was too much heat under some of the pans of food, and the food was getting dried out.  I think that’s how worry works.  A little anxiety is a good thing—it gets us moving faster across the street if we see a car is coming.  It gets us working on our taxes when we see April 15 closing in on the calendar.  But too much anxiety, and we dry out our souls!

Sometimes worry is productive and gets us moving in the right direction.  But all too often, worry gets us moving in the wrong direction.  It moves us AWAY from God!  That is why Jesus said, “Do not worry about what your life.”  Actually, Jesus said, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life.”  The command not to worry comes immediately following Jesus warning his disciples that they cannot serve two masters.  We cannot serve both God and money.  We have to decide if we are going to trust in our own abilities and provision—or trust in God’s goodness and provision.

Jesus makes a strong argument that we can indeed trust in God’s goodness and provision.  Look at the birds of the air!  They don’t sow or reap or store away their food in barns, and yet God provides for them.  Are you not worth much more than a bird?  Or consider the lilies of the field.  They do not labor or spin, yet now even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed as beautifully as one of these.  If we can trust God for the lilies to bloom every spring, in all their glory, cannot we trust God to care for us as well?

Jesus warns us not to worry about what we will eat, or what we will drink or what we will wear, because worry usually pulls us away from trusting in God.  Instead, God wants us to seek first God’s kingdom and righteousness.  God wants our thoughts to be centered on God!  If we get our priorities straight, everything else will fall into place. We will be able to trust God for even the most essential things of life.

As I was writing this sermon, I thought a lot about the “therefore” at the start of this passage.  Was Jesus’ main point that we shouldn’t worry about money?  Or was he talking about something bigger than that?  The people listening to his sermon were most likely NOT struggling with materialism and what to do with an abundance of cash.  For most people, a daily wage was just that:  enough money to live on for one day.  They were people who had just enough, with very little safety net.  The choice to serve God or money was really a choice to trust God or not trust God.

As people with savings accounts, 401K investments, social security, pensions, home ownership, etc., it might be hard to picture worrying about where the next meal will come from, or if we can afford to buy winter coats for our kids.  But when you’re worried about your health, or whether we might be getting involved in another war, or if you child has someone to sit with at the lunch table, it really doesn’t matter how much money you have in your bank account.  These issues are important to all people!

And so I think Jesus had something much broader in mind when he urged us not to worry about our lives.  Jesus does not want us to worry about money, or health, or peace, or friendships, or anything at all—if that worrying is pulling us in the wrong direction.  A little bit of worry to get us moving in the right direction, that might be a good thing!  And perhaps the best direction of all would be if our worries would move us to our knees.  Move us to pray.  Move us to talk to God and examine our worries in the light of God’s promises.

All week long, I had two songs running side by side in my head.  The Simon and Garfunkel song that I modified the lyrics to, “Hello worry my old friend” was one song.  And the other is “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.”  Worry is like an old friend, a familiar face that pops in when life is particularly stressful.  But worry is definitely not our best friend!  When worry stops by, isn’t that the perfect time to invite Jesus to come over, too?

The writer of that old hymn, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” had a particularly sad life.  His name was Joseph Medlicott Scriven.  He dreamed of being an officer in the military, but poor health made him give up that hope.  Then he fell in love.  Yay!  Nothing like falling in love to lift us up when we’re disappointed. But his finance died in a drowning accident the night before their wedding!  He moved from Ireland to Canada to get a fresh start, and fell in love again.  Yay!  But his fiancée took ill and died before they could be wed.  After that, he suffered from depression—we can see why—but in the mid 1800’s, no one knew how to treat that.  Yet his faith was strong, and his own suffering drove him to do a great deal to help the poor and others who were suffering, too.  But his neighbors thought he was weird.  He died a lonely man—except for the friendship he had found in Jesus.

“Oh what peace we often forfeit, oh what needless pain we bear, all because we do not carry, everything to God in prayer.”  What a powerful line from the hymn, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.”  If worry is one of your oldest and most familiar friends, Jesus would like to become an even better friend!  We know that worry will not add a single hour to our lives.  We know scientifically that it’s just the opposite:  worry actually negatively impact our health.  What we don’t know is how to effectively neutralize our worry.  If the Sorgenfresser and the Guatemalan worry dolls won’t cut it, what will?

I’d like to share with you a simple technique I read about in Jennie Allen’s bestselling book, “Get Out Of Your Head.”  Jennie Allen is a Christian speaker and author from Dallas, Texas.  She says truth is our most effective antidote for worry and offers this four-step process for reducing the unhelpful worry in your life.

Grab the thought. What specifically are you worried about?
Diagnose the thought. Is it true?
Take it to God. What does God say about it?
Make a choice. Am I going to believe God?

Let’s take an example to see how this works.  Say your boss calls and says, “We need to talk.  Soon.”  Now, for all you know, your boss wants to see you to give you a bonus for a job well done!  But for many of us, those five words will serve as an immediate invitation for our old friend Worry to stop by.  What did I do wrong?  Am I in trouble?  Am I going to lose my job?  How will I fix whatever problem it is I’ve created?  It doesn’t take much to get Worry wound up!

But who wants to go through life unnecessarily worried?  So let’s try this four step process.  #1, Grab the thought.  Boss calls, and immediately we are worried about losing our job.  Got it.  #2, Diagnose the thought.  Is it true?  Good question!  Sometimes our worries are true.  If I know my performance hasn’t been up to snuff lately, or I know I’m doing my job well but my boss has a reputation for being unfair, my worries might be founded.  Or I might know I’m trying my best, and my worries are mostly an old reaction.  Either way, it’s important to #3, Take it to God.  What does God say about my worries?  We’ve just read this beautiful passage of scripture that reminds us, God knows we need jobs.  God know we need food and clothing.  But look at the birds of the air and lilies of the field.  Jesus has told us our jobs are not the most important thing.  We can trust God to take care of us.  Which brings us to step #4, Make a choice.  No one can serve two masters.  Will we let our worries run our day, or God?  Will we let Worry be our best friend, or Jesus?

These are important questions, because the defining characteristic of a Christian is someone who chooses to trust in God.  It is our choices to trust in God’s goodness and provision—instead of our own abilities and provision—that set us apart from the pagans, as Jesus says.  All the Sorgenfresser worry eaters and Guatemalan worry dolls in the world can’t make the decision to trust God for us. Only we can do that.  Ultimately, it is our trust in the truth of God’s promises that neutralizes our worries.

Recently I read the book, “Before Amen” by Max Lucado.  Pastor Karen and I are going to be teaching a group study on this book in February, and you can find more information about that in our newsletter and on our website.  One of my favorite lines in the book is, “Before you face the world, face your Father.”  So many of us start our days with a cup of coffee and the news.  Since the pandemic, I’ve noticed I don’t even get out of bed and make the coffee before looking at the news.  I just grab my phone, but I realize now, by doing that, I am setting myself up for a day of worry!  Instead, maybe we should start our days with something spiritually nutritious.  Some scripture.  Some prayer.  A favorite hymn or devotional book.  Make it a rule:  no talking to your old friend Worry before talking to your Best Friend Jesus.  Seek first the kingdom of God from the very moment you wake up, and see if that doesn’t strengthen you to quiet worry all day long.

Jesus said, “No one can serve two masters.  Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other.  You cannot serve both God and money.”  But I think we can go a step further and say, “We cannot serve both God and worry.”  Sometimes worry is helpful and gets us moving on something important.  But most of the time, worry gets us moving in the wrong direction.  It gets us moving away from God.  So do not worry about your life!  Take every thought captive, and subject it to God’s truth.  Give your old friend Worry the heave ho, and let Jesus your best friend keep you company instead.  Amen.