Our Eyes Are On You

Funny how books, sermons, and personal stories come into your life at just the right moment. Just in the nick of time! Just when God knows you need it!

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How often I submit to my fears instead of submitting my fears to God. When things start going wonky, my mind rushes to the most disastrous outcome I can imagine. I call it catastrophizing, but its common name is worry.

Worry focuses me on everything that’s out of my control. It gives me a stomachache that drives me to the plumbing. Or drives me to the couch to watch silly reruns like Seinfeld because I can’t seem to do anything but distract myself. That’s not totally true, in times of deep worry, I’m driven to deep clean and reorganize my entire house. It’s as if all the blessings in my life are blotted out by a gigantic funnel cloud swirling any hope into smithereens, and I’m trying to batten down the hatches. In the moment, Bible verses become sawdust in my mouth. God feels distant. My cries for help, only echoes in my head.

This week I had fresh cause to worry. The details don’t matter. The important fact is I have no control over them.

But just before the new worry launched its assault, I’d read a memoir titled Undone by Michele Cushatt. It’s the true story of a season in her life when she faced her first husband’s addiction, divorce, single parenthood, the trials of a new marriage and blended family, cancer, the addition of three special needs preschoolers to her family, and big surprise, panic attacks. Any one of these trials would have undone me.

I feel like such a spiritual and emotional wimp by comparison, but that’s not the point. Her story is an extreme example of what God allows in our lives, not to punish us or teach us a lesson, but to prove that his presence is enough to hold on to in a broken world where at any moment our comfort and seeming control can be overturned.  

Towards the end of the book Michele references a Biblical episode where King Jehoshaphat is faced with the impending attack of a vast enemy army and says,

“For we have no power to face this vast army that is attacking us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.”

2 Chronicles 20:12 (NIV)

Jehoshaphat knew he was out gunned, and his only refuge was his God, so his focus was not on his own catastrophizing. He doesn’t collapse on his couch to distract himself with entertainment or start deep cleaning his tent.

Instead, he listens to the voice of God through one of his prophets.

“Do not be afraid or discouraged because of this vast army. For the battle is not yours, but God’s”

2 Chronicles 20:15 (NIV)

My point is, until we leave our earthly bodies and see God face to face, we need to share our stories about his amazing grace in our ordinary lives. For it’s in the midst of our disasters big and small, that God works in, for, and through us to prove He is enough even as we long for perfection in a world continually smashed by sin.

So, tell your stories, sisters, as I tell mine, as Michele Cushatt so masterfully told hers, to encourage the body of Christ and drown out the catastrophizing shouts of the enemy. Instead, let’s keep our eyes on the salvation, provision, protection, and lovingkindness of our almighty, sovereign Lord.                           

“In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials, so that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”

1Peter 1:6-7 (NASB)

Cover photo by Marina Vitale on Unsplash