A (Very) Anxious Age
“I didn’t sleep well last night” is a sentence I’ve said too many times. There were some justifiable moments. Bringing a baby home, a sick four-year-old, warnings of tornados, these were more than reasonable reasons to keep me from sound sleep. No worries there. But what about the other days?
It seems we’re all a bit overwhelmed, a little too stressed. Anxiety can be what we feel and what we speak. Anxiety comes when we try to go at it on our own. We’re encouraged by marketers and influencers to look the part and present ourselves as if we have it all together. But the way that marketing works is that you have to first live a life of introspection, thinking about yourself and your image, and second feel pretty terrible about yourself. Too often, the messaging works.
Anxiety is the air we breathe. Worried about today and worried about tomorrow. Uncertain and unconfident about what people will say about us as friends, co-workers, church members, sons, daughters, or parents. A latent though palpable anxiety sits just at the surface of life. We so easily and so frequently turn in on ourselves pondering our own thoughts, our own intentions, our own plans and procedures. It’s entirely human to think about ourselves—it’s nothing new at all. But in the age of image, we eventually collapse in on ourselves. We’re not built for it. We’re not capable of being neighborly and joyful in our worship while we obsess at what others are doing and saying at all hours of the day, leaving us feeling isolated, lonely, and altogether, worse.
Not exactly a “Word for the Day” kind of encouragement, is it? But there’s something else to consider. What if it’s an entirely normal human experience to feel the prick of anxiety? What if (at some level) it’s a good thing? Often the everyday, uncomfortable kind of anxiety can be the smoke to our internal fire. It could be the weathervane showing which direction our heart is pointing. So rather than continuing to dig deeper into ourselves, what if we turned our attention to God?
We all know that prayer is an essential part of the Christian life. Perhaps to our surprise, in the first few centuries of the Church, there weren’t really manuals for how to pray (or how to pray better). Instead, they would comment on the Lord’s Prayer to help early and experienced Christians understand life with God. This short well-known prayer puts words in our mouth to declare our dependence on our Father. We recognize that we’re needy, for food, forgiveness, and so much more. Furthermore, we learn through the Lord’s Prayer that we’re not the ones who bring God’s kingdom to bear; that we can’t provide our daily bread; that we can’t forgive our own sins; that we’re not sufficient to deliver ourselves from evil of any sort.
But the (very) good news is that God is more than capable. He is the One who brings the kingdom, does His will, gives us our daily bread, forgives us our trespasses, and indeed, delivers us from evil. So, whether you’re new to following Christ or you’ve been walking with Him for decades, the Lord’s Prayer gives us the words for communion with God. Prayer, the little miracle of speech, is our response to our Creator. Prayer is grace upon grace. And in a (very) anxious age, that’s something that can lift our eyes, open our mouth, and in time, settle our heart.
Ethan Jones is Associate Professor of Old Testament and Hebrew at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. His current writing focuses on Psalms, poetry, and prayer. He has recently published Psalms in an Age of Distraction (Baker Academic, 2024). He will be participating in a panel on “Confronting Anxiety” at the 2026 Timothy Project Conference.
