There was once a man who was a great worrier.  In fact he could have worried for America in the Anxiety Olympics.  For many years he had had difficulty getting to sleep at night because he worried about burglars.  He would lie in bed listening for the slightest sound.  He would hear the gate creek or a tree rustle and his mind would imagine an intruder in the house.  Most nights tiredness would eventually get the better of him and he would at last drift off to sleep.  Then one night after he’d fallen asleep his wife was woken by the sound of the front door opening.  She courageously got out of bed, leaving her husband to sleep and went to the top of the stairs.  She turned on the light and discovered a burglar standing in the hallway looking rather surprised.  Unfazed, the woman announced "Good evening, welcome to our house.  I’m pleased to see you.  Come upstairs and meet my husband.  He’s been waiting 10 years to meet you." 

I wonder if you can identify with that man.  Would you describe youself as an anxious person?  If so, what do you worry about?  Well, this morning’s Old Testament lesson may have something to say to those of us who get a little anxious.  In it the prophet Isaiah speaks words of hope to a people in desperation.  He says, “He who created you, who formed you, fear not for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.  When you pass through the waters I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers they will not sweep over you.  When you walk through the fire you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.  For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Saviour.”

Now, as I’ve pointed out many times before when preaching about various passages of Scripture, God here does not promise a smooth ride for his people.  He doesn’t say ‘You will not have to pass through rivers and waters, and fire’.  In fact he implies that they will have to.  It’s not even conditional, ‘If you pass through waters and rivers and fires’.  No, it’s a foregone conclusion: When you pass through them.  Now, that’s not what you and I want to hear.  When you pass through floods and fires.  I’d rather have ‘if you pass through floods and fires’, or better still ‘you will not pass through floods and fires.  But that isn’t the life of Christ.  His way is the way of the cross, which lest we forget, was an instrument of death.  So where is the hope I just mentioned?  It’s here:  that when they pass through the floods and the fires God will be with them.  And he will ensure that the floods won’t overwhelm them and the fires won’t scorch them.

But there’s plenty to fear and plenty to be worried about – if the people choose to focus on the flood and the fire instead of looking to God who walks beside them. 

Let’s understand, of course, that this is symbolic writing.  Some of us in our lifetimes may face (or may have already faced) literal floods and fires.  But here Isaiah is describing spiritual floods and fires.  And they can be anything that threatens our faith in God’s love and protection.  When I think about going through floods I think of things that overwhelm people.  Being completely submerged in things.  Being unable to cope.  Being powerless.  So what kind of things overwhelm you?  What tries to drown you and suffocate you?   People talk of ‘drowning in despair’.  ‘Overwhelming debt’.  ‘A sea of troubles’ (that’s Shakespeare, that one).  ‘A flood of regret’.  You hear all these phrases.  And the promise of God is ‘when you pass through the waters I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers they will not sweep over you’. 

And when you think of fire what comes to mind?  I think of fire, and I think of testing, temptation, turbulent emotions.  I think of destruction and pain and loss.  Going through the fire like gold being refined.  The fire is painful; it brings to the surface unpleasant things.  And each of us goes through the fires.  Sometimes the fire can be so much a part of daily life that it seems we’re living in the furnace.  But the promise of God is ‘when you walk through the fire you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.’

And yet we imagine the worst.  We fear the phone call with unexpected bad news; we dread the visit to the doctor and the results of tests; we anxiously eye the stock market; we think of children and grandchildren and worry for their future in a world of temptations and dangers that we could not even have imagined when we were kids.  We are tempted to worry about so much.  I’ve wondered why human beings worry.  And this is what I’ve concluded: At the heart of every little worry and anxiety is the suspicion that if I do have to go through the flood and the fire God will not be there with me.  Is that not it?  If I go through sickness God won’t be there, or unemployment, or bereavement, or whatever the flood or fire happens to be.  I’ll have to face it on my own.  And on my own I fear it will be too much for me.  The flood and the fire will defeat me.  If I’m right then it means that worry is the opposite of faith.  You may have thought that doubt is the opposite of faith, but I think it’s worry.  It’s the absence of belief that God is all-powerful and loves us.  That is worry.

And the problem with worry, and what makes it so destructive of our peace and faith, is that it produces nothing of value.  All it does is remove our peace and faith.  It doesn’t solve any problems.  It doesn’t spur us on to action and good works.  All it does is ruin our day. 

When we worry we place our faith in negative events; we place our trust in unpleasant things; we build our day on the foundation of assumed disaster and a belief in defeat.  I was going to read a quote by someone who said “Worry is wasting today's time to clutter up tomorrow's opportunities with yesterday's troubles.”  But as I can’t work what he meant I won’t.  But I’m reassured by the looks on your faces that none of you understand it either.  Apparently, a dense fog that can cover an area the size of seven city blocks one hundred feet deep is made up of less than one glass of water divided into sixty thousand million drops. There’s not much there but it can cripple an entire city.  Believe me, I’m English and I know what I’m talking about when it comes to fog.  And that’s how it can be with worry.  Sometimes there’s not much substance to it, but it can have devastating affects on our peace and faith.  According to some research 40% of things that people worry about will never happen, 30% are about things in the past that can't be changed, 12% are about criticism by others, mostly untrue, 10% are about health, which gets worse with worry, and 8% are about real problems that will be faced

So how does a Christian overcome worry?  Well, as I think about it I suspect that we don’t overcome it all.  Like most obstacles in the Christian life the true overcomer is God.  If we’re able to let him be God then the cause of our worries will vanish, like the fog vanishes under a hot sun.  If we’re content to let him be in charge then why worry?  Now, if we are driven by a belief that the well-being of the world is down to us, then we’d have every reason to worry.  If it’s all down to us then heaven help us.  If my safety and wellbeing and those of the people I love depends on my performance then I think I’d be right to worry, because I’m not up to the task of securing our wellbeing and safety.  But if it is God’s job to look after the people I care for, and if it is in his job description to provide for our needs then why worry?  It’s not my job.  I can do what I’m responsible for, but I can’t sustain and run the world.  And here is a secret that our friends in AA can teach us Christians.  It’s their serenity prayer.  ‘God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change and the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.’  Because if we’re able to make that distinction between what we can change and what we can’t change then we can get to work on doing the things we can do, and leave the rest the God.  And what can we change?  Well, not much really.  Actually, all we can change is ourselves – our own behaviour and attitudes.  We can’t change other people or the economy or world and national events.  So leave all that to God.  This was true for me putting my kids on a United Airlines flight to London 4 days after the terrorist incident on a United transatlantic plane at Detroit at Christmas.  I can’t change the security procedures at an airport.  I can’t make sure that everyone there does their job properly.  I can’t change the minds of terrorists.  So why worry?  Accept those things I can’t change, commit my loved ones to God, and be at peace.  Mary Crowley once said, “Every evening I turn my worries over to God. He's going to be up all night anyway.”  And another woman looked back over her long life and the suffering she had inflicted on herself by worrying and concluded, "I've had a lot of trouble -- most of which never happened!"

But very many Christians find it difficult to make that distinction between what we can change and what we cannot change.  We can make one of two mistakes.  Either we can believe that God needs us to run the world, that we have to change situations that are, in fact, beyond our control and pull people’s strings so that they do what’s right; or we can neglect all our responsibilities, and think that God doesn’t ask anything of us, including the call to change ourselves into the likeness of Christ.  That last one is a good cure for worry - if you give up all your responsibilities, sure you’ll have fewer worries.  But failing to take responsibility for yourself opens up a whole other world of pain not just for you but for those around you.

The businessman J. Arthur Rank was diagnosed with a stomach ulcer.  Hs doctor’s advice was clear.  Stop worrying.  But he was very attached to worrying.  It was an old friend, or rather an old enemy.  So he decided he would save up all his worrying and do it all on one day of the week. He chose Wednesdays. When anything happened that caused him to be anxious and annoyed his ulcer, he would write it down and put it in a worry box and forget about it until next Wednesday. Then the following Wednesday he opened his worry box and read the slips of paper and got ready to spend a day of worry-free … er … well, worry.  The strange thing was that when he read the slips of paper in his worry box he found that most of the things that had disturbed him the past week were already settled. It would have been useless to have worried about them anyway.  

Back to where we started.  The promise of God, made through the prophet Isaiah.  “Fear not, for I have redeemed you.  I have called you by name, you are mine.  When you pass through the waters I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers they will not sweep over you.  When you walk through the fire you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.  For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Saviour.”