Overcoming Worry With Hope

If you've ever had a friend or a loved one come to you for comfort or guidance because of something they are worrying about, you probably gave them advice that amounted to something like this: "Try not to worry, it will only make things worse."  

You may have also dismissed their worry by assuring them they had nothing to worry about, or that stressing over something they couldn't control wasn't productive.  You could do this because you weren't the one worrying.  

However, when it comes to our own concerns and stressors, we often find it difficult to heed our own advice.  In fact, we may not even want to hear the very things that we have told other people when we were trying to assuage their fears.  

When we're the ones worrying, it's hard to see beyond the thing that is in front of us, causing us to spin out, turn inward, lose sleep, and a host of other effects that are the direct result of where worry takes us when we let it.  

And in those moments, it's so easy to lose hope and to begin to dread what comes after if the thing we are worrying about comes to pass.  

Worry narrows our vision until the future looks like a wall. Hope, by contrast, opens a window.

Richard Rohr names the resistance we feel: 

“The human ego prefers anything, just about anything, to falling, or changing, or dying. The ego is that part of you that loves the status quo – even when it's not working. It attaches to past and present and fears the future.” 

Rohr is absolutely right: our ego clings—sometimes even to what hurts—because clinging feels safer than surrender. But Christian hope is not naïveté; it is a practiced trust rooted in God’s character and the Resurrection’s promise.

Jesus invites, “Do not worry about tomorrow” (Matthew 6:34). That’s not a call to denial; it’s a call to re-centering. Tomorrow belongs to the God who “makes all things new” (Revelation 21:5) and is even now “doing a new thing” (Isaiah 43:19). 

The Apostle Paul describes hope as a Spirit-gift that fills us “with all joy and peace in believing” so that we “abound in hope” (Romans 15:13). And hope grows through endurance: “suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope” (Romans 5:3–5).  

In other words, hope is not optimism with a smiley face; it’s the outcome of handing the pen back to God when our ego wants to write every line.

Rohr’s critique exposes the ego’s fear of falling, changing, and dying. The Gospel answers with the pattern of death and resurrection. We release what we cannot control, we die to our self-insistence, and we rise into a freer, truer life. 

Today, picture your worry in your own open hands. Name it. Then offer it to God. Let the ego’s grip loosen. The One who holds your future also holds you.

Let whatever is worrying you right now go. Die to your ego’s demand to manage the outcome, and surrender your future to a loving God who is already there.

Prayer:
God of hope, pry open my clenched hands. Quiet my anxious mind. Teach me to release control, to die to the false self, and to trust your faithful love. Fill me with your Spirit so I may abound in hope. Amen.

Reflection Questions:

1. Where is my ego clinging to the status quo out of fear?

2. What small act of surrender could I practice today?

3. Which Scripture about hope do I need to carry into this week?