The Sliding Scale of Anxiety and Peace
For several years I worked in Barkerville as a shopkeeper and historical interpreter. One of my good friends worked at the general store measuring out candy for the visitors on an old sliding scale. You could buy the candy by the quarter pound (nobody ever knew what that meant!), and then it was placed in waxed brown paper that was folded into an envelope. I always loved to watch the candy being measured out on that scale as the shopkeeper would slide the different weights along the arm until they came into perfect balance with the weight of the candy. And then once the math was figured, the amount paid, the guest would walk away, happily enjoying their sweet purchase.
Our lives can often feel like they are as delicate to balance as that sliding scale. On the pan side we heap the issues, concerns, values and struggles of our lives. They drop the pan down, weighing heavy on our hearts. And to balance them out, we turn to worry, anxiety, coping mechanisms, vices, other people, work, and many other things. It’s as though we think, by employing these actions, we are sliding the weights along the arm of the scale, able to determine the perfect moment of balance. As if the issues and concerns that are heavy in our lives can be balanced out by our worry and anxious thoughts. Jesus said to his disciples, “”Does worry add anything to your life? Can it add one more year, or even one more day? So if worrying adds nothing, but actually subtracts from your life, why would you worry about God’s care for you?”” (Luke 12:25-26, TPT) The reality is that the slides aren’t moving at all, in fact we’re just heaping more weight onto the pile of our burden, compacting it, making it more dense as it weighs us down. Our quest for balance will never be achieved and we could stand at that scale constantly adding and subtracting, adjusting and readjusting the sliding weights, never finding that magic moment where everything aligns into a weightless balance.
Jesus offers us a way to find that moment of release found in balance, but for more than just a moment. He offers to us a whole lifetime and lifestyle of balance. In Matthew 11:28-30, Jesus offers this invitation into an exchange with him, ““Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”” Give him all the concentrated heaviness that weighs you down, and he will give you rest. Peace.
There is an important key here about peace:
We cannot achieve it for ourselves.
It is given to us in a holy exchange as we relinquish our burden to Jesus, and accept his invitation to have rest for our souls. Some ways that we can release these burdens and anxieties to him are through confession (be honest and tell him what you are holding onto), prayer (speak to Him and listen to Him. Use these scriptures to invite him into your anxiety: Psalm 139:23-24; Psalm 55:22; 1 Peter 5:7), and repentance (turn away from how you’ve been doing things to walk in his perfect peace, sustained by his strength, knowing you are loved!). But do not simply release, for the flip side of his promise is that you also receive! Receive His peace, receive his love, receive his rest.
As you make Him the new way of finding balance in our life, turn your thoughts of worry more quickly to thoughts of Jesus. Don’t wait for the scale to become unbalanced and weighed down. Jesus wraps up his teaching in with this thought, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Luke 12:34 NIV) What you value, you think about. Let your thoughts and heart rest in Him, so that what you treasure brings freedom and life.
