Everyone is overwhelmed right now and that’s to be expected. These are unprecedented times we are living in, not to mention the intrinsic stress of everyday life. Oh and don’t forget internal conflicts, relationships, and everything else. But we don’t have to allow stress and anxiety to overtake us, or have victory over us, when God has already given us victory over all our trials and tribulations. There is another way – a way that doesn’t involve us allowing our anxiety and stress to give way to panic, but does involve us having faith.

I am taking a class this semester about freedom, especially as expressed in African-American literature, which has given me a great deal of anxiety and stress because my professor and I have a different understanding of what freedom is and every class feels like a battle. Not to mention, I have barely been allowed to get a word in edgewise. Long story short, it is just not fun for me, and for the past few weeks, I have been letting anxiety and fear eat away at me in addition to feeling guilty for not speaking up more often and imagining the worst case scenarios of what will happen if I speak my piece. But one day, I spoke and nothing happened. I didn’t fail the class, I didn’t die and no physical harm was done to me. And even though I know I’ll be fine, my anxiety and the enemy stir up other things in my thoughts, things that make me question if I said anything at all. I thought that I didn’t do or say enough.

So, of course, I sought my dad for advice, for wisdom that would point me in a different direction and show me a better way, and I pray this liberates you the way it did me. He said, as great as our capacity is to anticipate the worst case scenario, to think the absolute worst, infinitely greater is God’s capacity to resolve our problems, to circumvent anything that has the potential to harm us – be it fears, dangers, enemies, etc. We underestimate God and overestimate our ability to ruin any situation beyond repair, forsaking that all things work together for His good. Even when we make a heartbreaking mistake, or feel we missed an opportunity, or that the load we are carrying is just too heavy, He has already made a provision for us and has already solved our problem. Nothing we are experiencing now or have ever experienced is new to God. 

When we have anxiety or fear, we shouldn’t run towards it and embrace it, but rather run to God, so that He can embrace us and alleviate us of the burdens we bear. It doesn’t make any of what we’re going through dissipate, but the burden becomes lighter over time because God is helping us carry it. Freedom is not the erasure of pain and suffering or the tipping of the scale in our favor. We already have favor and freedom through Christ. That freedom enables us to live and endure in spite of our hardships and all the chaos that is happening in our world today. Freedom is finding peace and calm in the storm.

I am not at all suggesting that anxiety is a small thing, but I’m reminding you that God is a much bigger thing. The next time you find yourself overwhelmed or overcome with anxiety because of this pandemic and all that you have missed or lost as a result of it, or whatever additional trials you are currently enduring, and you feel like it is eating away at you as though it will be the death of you, I pose to you a question Paul asked many years ago – if God be for us, who can be against us?