Anxiety and worry

Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?

Take no thought in 1611 English means do not be anxious, not do not plan. The passage points at birds that are fed, and asks what anxious thought adds to a person's height. It addresses the churning, not the making of arrangements.

Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

The close of that section: enough trouble belongs to today already. It is a limit on how far forward to carry the weight, not a claim that tomorrow will go well. Evil here carries its older sense of trouble or hardship.

Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

Be careful for nothing means be anxious for nothing, and the sentence does not stop there. It replaces the worry with asking, specifically and with thanks. What is named afterwards is peace that guards the mind, not the outcome that was asked for.

Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time: Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you.

Written to scattered Christians under real pressure. The word translated care is the ordinary word for anxiety, and the image is of unloading it onto someone else. The reason given is four words long: for he careth for you.

And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.

Martha is called careful and troubled about many things, which is a description before it is anything else. Jesus names the state she is in by its symptoms, pulled in many directions at once, rather than telling her she should not feel it.

My heart is sore pained within me: and the terrors of death are fallen upon me. Fearfulness and trembling are come upon me, and horror hath overwhelmed me.

Anxiety as the body carries it: a heart in pain, trembling, horror coming over him. The psalm is David's, set against betrayal by a close friend, and it makes no attempt to sound composed about any of it.

And Hannah answered and said, No, my lord, I am a woman of a sorrowful spirit: I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but have poured out my soul before the LORD. Count not thine handmaid for a daughter of Belial: for out of the abundance of my complaint and grief have I spoken hitherto.

Hannah, childless and taunted for years, prays so hard that the priest takes her for drunk. Her answer is that she has been pouring out her soul out of the abundance of her complaint and grief. That is offered as an explanation, not an apology.

And Jacob said, O God of my father Abraham, and God of my father Isaac, the LORD which saidst unto me, Return unto thy country, and to thy kindred, and I will deal well with thee: I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies, and of all the truth, which thou hast shewed unto thy servant; for with my staff I passed over this Jordan; and now I am become two bands. Deliver me, I pray thee, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau: for I fear him, lest he will come and smite me, and the mother with the children. And thou saidst, I will surely do thee good, and make thy seed as the sand of the sea, which cannot be numbered for multitude.

The night before meeting the brother he cheated, Jacob prays while still afraid. He states the fear plainly, that Esau will come and kill the mothers with the children, and holds God to what God had said. Fear and prayer run together here.

Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls: Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation. The LORD God is my strength, and he will make my feet like hinds’ feet, and he will make me to walk upon mine high places. To the chief singer on my stringed instruments.

The prophet lists total agricultural failure, no figs, no olives, no grain, empty stalls, and says he will rejoice even so. It reads as a decision made inside the loss, with nothing said about the loss being reversed.