A worried mind is a divided mind. Worry takes a meat cleaver to our thoughts, energy, and focus.
lightstock_256403_xsmall_cheryl_The Bible’s most common word for “worry” is the Greek term: “merimnate.” The origin is “merimnao.” This is a compound of a verb and a noun. The verb is “divide.” The noun is “mind.” To be anxious, then, is to divide the mind. Anxiety chops up our attention, derails our purpose, and scatters our awareness in a dozen directions.
We worry about the past: what we said or did. We worry about the future: tomorrow’s assignments or the next decade’s developments. Anxiety takes our attention from the right now and directs it back then or up there.
The challenge is to keep our attention on the “right now.” Here is a resolve that I wrote and read often: