There are occasions in life, as I am sure all will all agree, that we become overburdened with various sorts of busy-ness. At those times it is not difficult to find oneself getting anxious about one thing or another, that something is being left undone, or not as well done as one would wish.

Anxiety is perhaps only round the next corner for all of us, and it is something that is probably a greater temptation for some than for others, according to one’s personality. Like pain in general, in one respect anxiety has its good and useful side, in showing us that something must be changed.

The most dangerous aspect of the disease of leprosy is that it first attacks the capacity to feel pain in one’s extremities – and after a while the deformities result from an accumulation of injuries, which because they have not been felt are not attended to.

A sense of pain is necessary to alert a person to do a simple thing like adjusting one’s weight from one foot to another or stretching out one’s toes.

If, through lack of feeling and therefore lack of pain, such simple adjustments are not made when they become necessary, the foot or the hand begins to deteriorate. Before very long an ulcerous condition, which again is not felt, begins to develop, and so the process of decline accelerates.

Perhaps some have no anxiety because they don’t care about anything, and then I suppose we have the mental equivalent of leprosy.

If that is so parts of our life, like leprous hands and feet, will begin to be deformed and useless, because we will have done them injury and have not cared to repent or to attend to the matter in any healing way. In the same way, we who are members of Christ’s body, the Church, are supposed to feel for one another out of mutual concern.

If we cut off that concern, it may be that some small injury experienced by a member through going unattended by the Church will cause deformation and ultimate loss.

Jesus Himself, though, teaches that we should not remain in a condition of anxiety, and the grounds upon which He teaches this are the Fatherhood of God and the fact that He has a “Kingdom” or a rule that is active in our universe.

There is a way of putting together the need to have concern and the instruction not to remain anxious. That is the way of submitting the concerns we have to the rule or Kingdom of God in prayer.

Out of such prayer and particularly by His Word we will often find not only the relief of anxiety but the ways of addressing the concerns we feel. We will know that certainly the rule of God is in practical effect in our universe.

The greatest sign that this is true, that the rule of God is in practical effect in our universe, is the reality of Easter itself, the fact, as abundantly witnessed, that the Lord Jesus overcame death by being raised from it.

This is the confirmation we needed that His passion and death constituted the greatest acts of His royal clemency on our behalf. No temptation to anxiety, therefore, comes to us without the assurance of His Kingship and rule, because there is no trouble we know that He is not fully and personally acquainted with.

In resisting temptation He is able to help us as a strong and merciful High Priest, and in suffering for righteousness’ sake it is He Himself who stands with us and within us. The signs that Jesus did, including the signs He did when risen from the dead, are written down, as is explained in S. John 20:31, that “you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.”

This “life” is not merely existence, but abundant life, which acts to oppose and defeat inordinate anxiety. Believing in the sovereign Messiahship of Jesus according to the scriptural witness is what enables us to have abundant life.

Jesus Christ is acknowledged in Revelation 1:5 as the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the Kings of the earth. He is the faithful witness because he faithfully did the will of God unto death, exercising royal clemency on our behalf in a pure and costly act. Being “firstborn” or first-begotten from the dead means He is sovereign of the dead.

As ruler or Prince of the Kings of the earth, He also has sovereignty here on earth. He has successfully opposed the claim of Satan to have such sovereignty. Oour inordinate anxieties are not necessary and constitute rebellion.

Let us put them away, and help one another to do so. The Lord Jesus, crucified and risen, reigns as King!

For commentary, information and devotional material see www.churchofenglandcayman.com and www.anglicansatprayer.org