When St. Paul says "put all anxiety away" he is saying a lot about God. He is saying what we may not always see. He truly believes there is no need to be afraid, that God has taken that away. God, he believes, means what he says, that he can be trusted, that he is real and alive, that he is God because he loves.
It can sometimes be hard to believe in this God, to doubt his willingness or need to share. We can feel safer with him at a distance even if it makes him someone other than he is. It can seem easier with God only in heaven. The rules then are clear.
It may be we find it harder to see him as he is because we cannot always say who we will be in relation to him. Maybe uncertainty made us comfortable with claims of unworthiness or sin. It defined a situation more easily handled than familiarity. Despite his wanting to be a friend and lover, we kept him at a distance, out there at the edge of heaven upon his majestic throne. He wanted to talk of goodness and understanding, telling of love and unity. Ideas that were hard to hear, harder still to respond to.
God is God, but won't let that come between us. Maybe when we believe and accept him on his terms, as someone who wants and needs us, when we let him be himself, maybe then Paul's words will ring truer and "God's own peace will stand guard over our hearts and minds, in Christ Jesus, and then there will be no more need to fear."
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