Note: On Tuesdays and some Sundays, you can find me at Your Daily Tripod, owned by my friend TonyD. A longer version of the post below appears there.
Worrying is dangerous.
Many of our first-world worries of the day—will Metro be a mess yet again, will the store have canned lentils, will the repair person come on time—are, in the scheme of things, minor. They suck up time and space in our heads and souls, even though we have no real control over them.
Worries of the past take up room too: Did we respect our 
parents, long buried, as we should have? Was it the right thing to go to that college twenty years ago? What about that incident ten years ago that cost us pride, a fine, and maybe a night in jail?
Worrying about the future may be similarly futile. Regardless of what Jesus says in the Gospels, can any of us actually know what judgment day or purgatory or heaven or hell will look like? Can we truly understand the pain of permanent separation from God… or the joy of eternity with Him?
Worry accomplishes nothing and saps us of the time and energy we need today to do His work. For if we do that to the best of our ability and sometimes beyond, we can believe that like the man with the demonic spirit, we will be purified without harm coming to us. We can believe that, as Paul tells us in 1 Thessalonians 5:9-10: “God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep we may live with him.” (NRSVCE)
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