Reading:Philippians 4: 6-7

6  Have no anxiety about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.
7  And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

COMMENTARY

Calloused hands were the badge of the pioneers but a furrowed brow is the sign of modern man.  With modern technology, we should have less to worry about than previous generations, but instead we have more worry.  And when life should be easier than our forefathers', we have more uneasiness.  Though we have less real cause for anxiety than our predecessors, we are inwardly more anxious.

Historians will probably call our era "the age of anxiety".  Anxiety is the natural result when our hopes are centred in anything except God and His will for us.  When we make anything else our goal, frustration and defeat are inevitable.

In fact, sometimes a truly committed Christian is in conflict with the society around him or her.  Society is going one direction and the Christian is going in the other direction.  This brings about conflict.  But God has promised in midst of trouble and conflict a genuine peace, a sense of assurance and security that a worldly person never knows.

NEWS

PRAYER (say together)

Lord, teach me to keep my eyes centered on you rather than on myself and my anxiety. Help me to allow you to give me peace of heart and mind today and forever.