The Journey Inward provides practical insights to facilitate the ability to sit still before God, using the contemplative writing of Teresa of Avila’s The Interior Castle as a framework.

Day Three

Matthew 6:25, 33-34: “Do not worry about your life … But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.”

Devotional

Worry can take over your mind and feel overwhelming, frustrating and debilitating. It occurs when we are stressed or anxious. To manage it we use all types of distractions. For a short time, these can assist us and we get fooled into thinking we have our worries under control. Over the long term, this rarely works, because when we stop still an avalanche of these troublesome thoughts descends upon our mind.

This leaves us in a no-win situation, where we need to keep busy or avoid our thoughts in order to manage them. It is why many of us find it difficult to fall asleep at night because it can be the first time in our day that we are still and the world around us is silent. To our frustration, we notice our thoughts are snowballing. They go around and around with problems we need to solve, worries and fears of what might happen, and regret about what did not work out the way we hoped. Sitting with our thoughts during the day gives us space to deal with these things constructively, with the hope that they will not overwhelm us at night.

Take a moment to reflect:

Do a brain dump and get your worries out on a piece of paper or by speaking them out loud to someone.

Schedule a worry time in your day where your mind can go free, so that you allow yourself to be aware of your troublesome thoughts.

Prayer of faith: Commit each worry to God, surrender them and let them go.

Dr Thompson’s Christ Centred Mindfulness books are available at Koorong. Additional resources are available here.