Fretting

“Fret not thyself; it lendeth only to evil doing.”  Psalm 37:8

Chambers focuses today on fretting.  (All other aside, isn’t that a great word – “fret.”  It carries with it so much more of what it is than its poor substitute – “worry.”)  On this passage Chambers writes: “It is one thing to say ‘Fret not,’ but a very different thing to have such a disposition that you find yourself able not to fret.”  So true!

As usual, Chambers cuts to the heart of it: “Fretting springs from a determination to get our own way.”  It springs from, if you will on this day, our “Declaration of Independence” from God.   (A declaration that is destined to be less successful than the one in 1776.)  It comes from things not working out the way I have projected and played out in my mind, things not meeting MY expectations.  All that to say that fret puts God in the background, in an advisory or observer capacity, if in fact He is in the equation at all.  Or as Chambers puts it, “All our fret and worry is caused by calculating without God.”