Love Breaks Through Our Worry

Have you ever had an awful, restless night of sleep? Perhaps you’ve had the experience of waking up in the middle of the night all alone. You stare up at the ceiling with the glow of your cellphone or alarm clock casting shadows around the room. You toss and turn, hoping to fall back asleep, but your mind gets going. In these moments of restlessness, we come face to face with our humanity. Many of us in these moments feel all alone. In that glow in the middle of the night, our minds swirl around the things we become experts at avoiding thinking about in the busyness of the day. We lie there, wondering about the future, about finances, about health; we worry about relationships, career paths, and retirement. We watch the clock as ten minutes becomes three hours. We watch the ceiling fan spiral above us, we watch the shadows, and in these moments of watching, we wonder and worry about so many things. We’ve all been there.

Love breaks through our restless watching, our wonder and our worry. Love settles our hearts in a way that mere money can never do. What we need more than a solution, or assurances about the future, is to find hope and peace in feeling loved. In the dark moments of our lives, God wants us to know that He is there, loving us and caring for us. Jesus comforted His worrying friends with these words, which we read in Matthew 6:25-27:

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?”

Worry and Worth

We can’t feel the love of God in our lives unless we realize our value. Jesus doesn’t merely say, “Don’t worry.” He says you have value—you have worth. Worrying is a sign that we believe there is nobody looking out for us, nobody who is caring for us. Deep at the root of worry is the belief that we are invisible, that we don’t matter, that we don’t have worth. At the root of worry is the belief that we don’t belong and that nobody really knows us. None of these things are true. Jesus says that God cares for the birds of the air by meeting all their needs, and if that is how God cares for them, God is caring for you since you are much more important than some random birds!

God loves you deeply. You are seen, you are known, you are loved!

God loves you deeply. You are seen, you are known, you are loved! As you’ve read through each of these love language chapters, you probably found yourself connecting at some level with each and every one of them. While we have a dominant love language, love is love. Who doesn’t feel some sense of worth when we receive a gift? Who doesn’t feel seen when someone gives us a kind and affirming word of encouragement? Don’t we all feel like we matter when someone does something to help us out or serve us? Regardless of your love language, we feel loved when we are being loved . . . but the key is to realize it. That is Jesus’ point here. When we realize our value to God, we can stop worrying, and as we stop tossing and turning, staring at the shadows of life, we find it possible to feel God’s love!