The Freest Person Who Ever Lived

Fashions in language come and go. But it’s likely that the phrase “stressed out” will remain fashionable for a long time to come. Some social scientists say the “stressed out” person is not neurotic but normal. It is fashionable, it seems, to get stressed out about all the things everyone else is stressed out about. It is fashionable (normal), it seems, to be stressed out about “getting ahead”; uptight about paying the bills, uptight about political problems, uptight about social problems, and even uptight about being uptight.

The stressed out person, the excessive worrier, is enslaved by an inflated notion of his or her ability to manage the future. But, we should not — we dare not — be stressed out about tomorrow and tomorrow’s tomorrows. Tomorrow belongs to God. If you want to give God a good laugh, tell Him your plans for the future.

In his letter to the Ephesians, the Apostle Paul describes himself as “a prisoner of Christ Jesus” (Eph. 3:1).…