A poem by Shel Silverstein begins like this:
Last night when I lay thinking here, Some What ifs climbed into my ear
and pranced and partied all night long, and sang their same old What if song:
‘What if I’m dumb in school?’
‘What if they’ve closed the swimming pool?’
‘What if I get beat up?’
‘What if there’s poison in my cup?’

After a long litany of “what ifs” he ends:
Everything seems swell, and then the night-time what ifs strike again!

The “what ifs” strike at any time of the day, not only at night. Each of us has our own list, our own set of “what ifs,” things about which we worry. These are anxious times that we live in. Many families struggle to make ends meet financially, attempting to provide for their members. Many families are strapped for time as well, as each family member has commitments which they feel they must meet. The events of September 11, 2001, and the war in Iraq have “kicked” our anxiety level “up a notch” or even two. The media streams images and words into our homes, our cars, and our places of business, telling us that living in the world is fraught with danger and hardship, while at the same time telling us that we deserve to have everything we want. We worry and we’re encouraged to worry about many things.

Too often the “what ifs” make us self-centered, existing in survival mode. Things that we want seem to become things that we desperately need when we turn inward listening to the voices of the “what ifs” and the anxiety they produce in us. We concentrate on making sure that we have what we are convinced we really need. We compete with one another, trying to be sure that we have more than our neighbor because we begin to think it is the things that we have that give us worth. God gets pushed off the throne of our hearts and status and possessions get enthroned there in God’s place. We hoard the resources that have been entrusted to us because we fear that if we share we will not have enough for ourselves. Anxiety replaces trust, and we forget that we are children of the Living God; we forget that God provides for our needs as a loving father provides for his children.

We are not commanded to refrain from working and having things. What we are commanded to do is not make them into more than what they are: useful things.

More importantly we may remember that all that we have is a gift from our loving father. We are invited to set aside our anxiety and trust the one who created us and loves us extravagantly. We are invited to use the things that we are entrusted with to glorify and serve God who created and cares for not only us but all of creation.

Vicar Patti

Silverstein, Shel ,“What ifs”, in A Light in the Attic, (New York: Harper Collins) 1981, p. 90.