Okay, so here’s the thing, I’m a bit of a worrier.  I’m a worrier.  I’m standing up here and telling you this for some reason; I worry about things.  I feel like I’m at one of those meetings.  Hi, I’m Duane, and I’m a worrier.  I think you’re all supposed to say, “Hi Duane.”  But sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and I just can’t help myself, I start thinking about things.  I think about the national debt, for example, the budget deficit.  Have you ever noticed that you worry the most over the things you have the least control over?  In the middle of the night I think about the budget deficit.  I think about Social Security, will there be anything left when I retire?  I wonder sometimes what the right thing is to do about immigration.  Lately, I’ve been thinking about Zimbabwe and Myanmar and China.  I think about Iraq and Afghanistan.  I think about Iraq a lot.  Are we making progress?  Are we in over our head?  I think about the huge sacrifice some young men and women have made.  I think about this a lot. 

I think about this church.  I think about this church a lot, this wonderful adventure that we’ve been on for the past year, this up and down roller coaster ride of an adventure.  I think about the church a lot.  I think about the future, what this church might look like in five years, or ten years, or fifteen.  God holds the future in his hand, he knows what the future will be, and he’s given us little glimpses of it, but sometimes I wish he would give us a few more details and give it to us right now, so I wouldn’t have to stay awake at night and think about this. 

So I’m a bit of a worrier, as I say; I worry.  I saw a cartoon of a man lying on a psychiatrist’s couch and he’s saying, “I’m worried that I don’t know what to worry about first.”  And he has this list of things he worries about: the Iraq war, terrorism, gas prices, the housing market.  I heard someone else say, “If you’re not confused by life and worried about things, you really don’t understand what’s going on.”  A poll was released back in April, and I know we can’t base everything on the latest poll, but this poll revealed that 81 percent of Americans, 81 percent, believe that our country is on the “wrong track”.  They’ve been asking this question for 25 years, and this is by far the most negative response they’ve had. 

So I worry, we all worry just a little bit, some of you have me beat in the worry department.  We’re afraid sometimes.  There are things to fear.  There’s a cute story of Louis Armstong, the great jazz musician, who grew up in Louisiana.  When he was a boy, his aunt Haddie sent him down to the creek nearby for water.  And one time, as he leaned over to fill his bucket, an alligator suddenly appeared in the creek, and it so scared young Louis that he dropped his bucket and ran home.  He told his aunt that there was an alligator.  But she told him to go back down there and get the water.  She said, “That alligator is just as scared of you as you are of it.”  So Louis answered, “Well, if that’s the case, then that creek water ain’t fit to drink.” 

On a more solemn note, I remember the comment made by a New York City policeman who was one of the first responders on 9/11; he watched the whole grisly thing unfold right there in front of him.  And he made the comment later, “I never used to think much about death.  But now there’s seldom a day that goes by that I don’t think about it.” 

So we worry.  We’re afraid.  Things happen.  I’m not the best person to give advice on how to stop worrying.  But I remember the advice of some wise old preacher who said, “There are those times in life when you just have to hang on and let go.”  Hang on and let go. 

Now I get the hanging on part.  The hanging on I understand.  I remember Ronald Reagan.  He was afraid of flying evidently; I didn’t know this.  Every flight on Air Force One was traumatic for him, something of an ordeal.  A reporter once asked Reagan while he was on Air Force One if he had overcome his fear of flying, and Reagan answered, as he hung on with white knuckles, he said, “Overcome it?  Why young man, I’m holding this airplane up by sheer will power!” 

That’s one way to hang on.  But we are told often, I remind you of this sometimes, of the virtue of persistence and determination, if we will just hang on, if we just will not give up or give in.  A writer who has studied the lives of many great men and women in history claims that there is a common thread that runs through their lives, and it’s this, that at some point they have this vision, this dream, of something that should be accomplished, something that needs to be done, and then they go to work to try and do it.  They are beaten over the head perhaps, knocked down, vilified, and for years maybe they go nowhere.  But every time they’re knocked down, they stand up.  You cannot destroy these people, he writes.  So hang on, this is the advice, hang on, when it looks like you can’t go on, when it looks like all is lost, when it seems that nothing will work out, hang on, hang on. 

There is this famous quote from Calvin Coolidge, “Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.  Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent.  Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.  Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.  Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”  So when things happen, hang on. 

And when things happen, let go.  Let go.  Sometimes the best way to hang on is to let go.  We can let go of our worries and our fears, because we know that we are letting them go into the hands of God.  “The Lord is my light and my salvation – whom shall I fear?  The Lord is the stronghold of my life – of whom shall I be afraid?” 

I have a friend who, a few years ago, was at a Chinese restaurant and he got a fortune cookie with this fortune: “Act as if it were impossible to fail.”  Now I don’t put much stock in fortune cookies, and neither does my friend (I once got a fortune cookie that said simply, “Eat more Chinese food”), but this friend of mine would remind himself constantly of these words, “Act as if it were impossible to fail.”  He saw great power in these words, and he felt that he was able to arm himself with the sentiment of these words and the attitude in these words, in order to face down some pretty big obstacles in his life and accomplish some pretty big things. 

Now I’m not suggesting that you arm yourself with these words from this fortune cookie.  But what if you armed yourself with these words, “The Lord is my light and my salvation – whom shall I fear?  The Lord is the stronghold of my life – of whom shall I be afraid”?  What if you let the beauty and power and strength of these words and the one who stands behind these words become a real presence in your life? 

Two weeks ago in the USA Today there was an article about a Shiite religious leader who decided to go into one of the most dangerous Sunni neighborhoods in Baghdad, wearing a white headdress that identified him as a Shiite, and walk up to a Sunni mosque and ask if he could come in and pray with his Muslim brothers.  And so, in an area where militias were shooting any Shiite on sight, this Shiite religious leader said, “I knew there was a big chance I would be killed.  But I just kept walking toward the mosque, and whispering to myself these words, ‘Don’t be afraid.  Don’t be afraid.’”  He was scared to death, but he kept telling himself, “Don’t be afraid.  Don’t be afraid.”  And when he got there, at first there was confusion on the part of the Sunnis, but then they came out and embraced him and brought him in where they did pray together. 

Things can happen to us.  We can find ourselves in difficult and dangerous situations; we can place ourselves, for good reason, in danger. The promise from God is not that bad things will never happen, because they may, they will.  But worrying about it doesn’t usually make it any better.  Have you noticed this?  Worrying usually makes it worse.  One scholar made this comment about Psalm 27: “Faith in God does not spare God’s people from difficulties.  But it does equip them and empower them to live with courage and hope despite difficulties.”  Another writer expressed it this way: “If we could just see how God is orchestrating everything behind the scenes, we would not be so worried or so fearful.” 

The thing to remember is that there is a safety and a security that goes beyond the material comforts of this life.  There is a safety and security in being held tightly in the loving arms of our Savior, no matter what may happen to us.  You may remember this one passage in the New Testament we didn’t read today where Jesus tells us that God cares for us so much that even the very hairs of our head are all numbered, God knows the number of hairs on our head.  Now it appears that counting the hairs on some of your heads might not be all that complicated.  But Jesus is telling us that one day we will see, we will understand, that while we were so fearful and so worried, not even the hair on our head was ever really in danger. 

I heard about a little boy who was trapped on the second floor of a house that was on fire, and they couldn’t get to him, they tried every way but they couldn’t get to him.  So the father yelled up to him, “Son, you’re going to have to jump.  Just crawl out onto the ledge and jump.  I will catch you.”  But the boy, of course, was afraid.  There was smoke all around.  He couldn’t see.  So he yelled down to his father, “Daddy, I want to jump, but I can’t.  I can’t see you.”  So the father yelled back up, as tenderly as he could under the circumstances, “Son, you’ve got to jump.  I know you can’t see me, but I can see you.  I’ll catch you.  But you’ve got to jump.”  You’ve got to let go.  And so the boy jumped, and his father caught him, and he was safe.           

Sometimes the only way to hang on is to let go.  We have a Father, and he tells us often, because we forget, we’re afraid, we worry, so he reminds us, to come and let go and stop carrying all our burdens ourselves, stop carrying the weight of the world, come and lay our burdens at his feet, place our worries and our cares and our difficulties in his hands.