Rector's letter for September Fowey News

Dear friends

Did you know that most people’s anxiety is focused and preoccupied with 40% of things that will never happen, 30% of things relating to the past that can’t be changed, 12% of things relating to other people’s criticism, which is generally untrue, and 10% of things relating to health, which often gets worse with stress and negative thinking. Only 8% of the time do they worry about real concerns that will need to be faced. So, if only about 8% of all the issues in our lives really turn out to be ‘something’ why is it that we spend so much time worrying and being highly anxious and stressed about all the rest?

I read a story about Arthur Rank, who decided to do all his worrying on one day each week. He chose Wednesdays. When anything happened that gave him anxiety and annoyed him, he would write it down, put it in his ‘worry box’ and forget about it until the following Wednesday. The interesting thing was that, on the following Wednesday when he opened his worry box, he found that most of the things that had disturbed him the past six days were no longer issues of concern. So it would have been useless to have worried about them in the first place.

Of course, there are important things going on in our lives that we do need to take seriously. However, if we spend most of our time worrying about the inconsequential, we won’t have time to focus on matters of consequence. When we are so concerned about the things that we can’t do anything about, we have a tendency to miss things which are really important and then we have no time and energy left to deal with them.

Jesus told his followers, “Do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on.” (Luke 12:22) If we are anxious and allow our quest for these basic necessities to become the major pre-occupation of our lives,  it may be to the neglect - or even to the complete exclusion of - far more important things. “For life is more than food and the body more than clothing.” (Luke 12:23)

If you’re interested in thinking about the more important stuff, please join us on Sundays at 10am in the Gallants.

We are living in a rootless world, in which so much of modern life is an unstable chimera. We have little direction, are disabused of history, and uncertain what we can trust. But in the midst of all of that there is ancient wisdom and structure to be discovered which has stood the test of time, rooted in the One who transcends it all.

With every blessing

Philip