Aiming dead center?

"Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith." (Henry Ward Beecher)

When I said, “My foot is slipping,” your unfailing love, Lord, supported me. When anxiety was great within me, your consolation brought me joy. (Psalm 94:18-19 NIV)

Charles Spurgeon wrote: "Anxiety doesn't empty tomorrow of its sorrows, but only empties today of its strength." Spurgeon was right - the more we focus on the 'what if' of tomorrow, the more our minds and emotions will spin out of control. That spinning will lead to more and more angst about our imagined issues until we find ourselves crying out to God because our 'footing' is swept out from under us.

Our footing is to be none other than Jesus Christ himself. When we give into the worries of tomorrow and the frustrations of today, we are likely doing it because we have allowed our steps to lead us to any other footing than him! When we see issues through our own eyes, we find the footing wobbly at best. It is like 'sinking sand' that is washed away little by little by each new wave of issue that comes our way.

The 'handle of faith' is available to all of us, all of the time, regardless of the circumstances. We often choose to go wildly trough life rather than having a steady and committed aim or purpose, though. Faith requires 'aim'. Let me explain. The arrow in a quiver is nothing more than 'available' until we take it from the quiver, place it firmly against the bow's string, then take aim. The moment we take aim, we are 'trusting' the arrow will do its work and hit the target.

Is it the arrow's responsibility to find the target? No! It is our aim that either makes or breaks the arrow's path, isn't it? If we look downwind of the target, we will likely be too high with our aim. If we look under the target, the arrow will likely fall short. It takes a consistent and purposeful focus on the bullseye while we take aim. The arrow finds its mark because all the pieces worked together - arrow, bow, and our aim. Faith is like that - we take it fully in hand, we maintain our focus on Jesus, and we don't allow our aim to be altered.

Our footing is important. As we go through life, there will be thousands of things that attempt to disturb our footing. The more we allow out footing to be disrupted, the more likely we are to have a 'skewed' aim. We take our eyes off 'dead center' - we get our eyes off Jesus and put them on ourselves, others, or the circumstances. Anything other than 'dead center' will lead to wavering and disappointing results. His unfailing love keeps us, protects us, and brings us through like nothing else. Anxiety has no grounds for 'anchor' in our lives when our eyes and heart are firmly fixed on Jesus. Just saying!