Jesus tells his followers in Matthew chapter six not to worry about their lives, what they will eat and what they will wear. He points to birds who don’t farm yet are fed and flowers that don’t make clothes yet are well-adorned. In light of these, Jesus says, don’t worry.

Instead, strive for the Kingdom of God. The food and clothing will follow.

This is hard instruction in my house these days. I shared last week about a major transition in the works for us, and I don’t know about you, but I’ve always found worrying to be the best way to get through transitions. When the future is uncertain, worry about it. Even if the worry adds nothing, it at least delivers the satisfaction of taking the situation seriously.

If you’re not worrying, you’re not paying attention.

I’ve also been reading Anne Marie Slaughter’s Unfinished Business, which is all about taking down the illusion that women and men (but mostly women) can “have it all” in terms of ambitious careers and healthy families. There’s a lot to worry about in that book, like the observation that, in an increasing share of college-educated families (mine included), women are the primary wage earners, and yet most are carrying that load on top of unrealistic expectations about being a wife and mother, and without the benefit of flexible working arrangements.

So I’m about to yank my family’s primary wage earner out of her job to move us to a new city where she doesn’t yet have a job, and it’s appearing less and less likely that she’ll find one that pays her as well as her current one or that provides more flexibility than she already has, which is none.

Yeah, I’m worried about that. I’m more worried about it every day.

The two assurances that Jesus wants his followers to hear in the midst of our worry about tomorrow are 1) God knows, and 2) we’re valuable.

That the thing we’re fretting about is known by another–that helps, right? Also, doesn’t it help to know that God is at least as worried as we are?

This is just a start. And it doesn’t address the very real experience of anxiety that, for many people, requires medication. Enduring that anxiety is not a sin. I don’t think chastising the anxious with platitudes about not worrying is what Jesus is about. I think Jesus takes anxiety and depression dead seriously, so I do too.

May you know your value as you strive for the Kingdom of God, and may worry be a fleeting companion.

I awoke Saturday hopeful of a news story that would explain away Friday night’s terrorist attacks in Paris. Of course, there was no such explanation. There was only a climbing death toll. But there was also something else, something that first unsettled and then angered me. I spent the remainder of the weekend wrestling with it.

It is the critique of social media-accelerated grieving the attacks in Paris had produced, in light of similar attacks in Beirut and Iraq that produce nothing of the kind. There’s a poem being shared expressing amazement at the response to the attacks and grieving the lack of like responses to attacks in Beirut and Baghdad. There’s a New York Times piece calling Beirut “forgotten.” Rolling Stone has an article saying Beirut is not only forgotten but ignored by the western media.

Journalist Martin Belam is helpfully pushing back against the claim that the media have ignored terrorist attacks outside Paris, writing on Medium, “Search Google News and you will find pages and pages of reports of the attacks in Beirut. Pages and pages and pages. Over 1,286 articles in fact — lots of which pre-date the attacks in Paris.”

But I suspect the perception of a disproportional response has more to do with Facebook than it does CNN. It’s about those bleu, blanc, rouge tinted profile pics (including mine), the safety check feature Facebook employed in Paris, and the #prayforparis hashtag.

I get it. All life is valuable. Murdered Parisians are not inherently more worthy of grief and attention than murdered Syrians or Lebanese. The western media narrative will necessarily dwell overmuch on Paris. I get it.

But I’m recalling a conversation with my friend Toby in seminary. Toby (who is from Michigan) often insisted that his faith was his citizenship, and so he would say, “I’m not an American. I’m a Christian.” To which I would answer, “No. You’re both.” On and on it would go. I’ve replayed that conversation in my mind countless times since Friday.

At stake for me is the contextual nature of our lived experience, including our experience of God, the church, our personal faith, and, in this case, national tragedy. Two things seem true to me at once. A posture of a-contextual religiosity that demands an equal measure of lament for all victims everywhere is distinctly Christian (see the parable of the Good Samaritan). But it strikes me as unhelpful and unhealthy to criticize people for their contextually-conditioned grief and to demand they feel as bad about things outside their context as inside. I think that breeds resentment and a decrease in compassion for all.

Maybe the road to equal appreciation for all life leads through more focused compassion and solidarity, not less. Maybe the only way to pray for the world is to pray for particular places–no, particular people and peoples. And maybe starting with peoples with whom we share bonds of cultural affinity isn’t all wrong.

“I don’t get to know what will happen. I don’t get to know why it happened, what I did right or wrong, not now. I have to live with that.” (Maggie, The Walking Dead).

Every choice takes away choice. When we say “Yes” to something, we are necessarily saying “No” to something else. We mostly know that.

What I am appreciating more and more, though, is the range of matters over which we forfeit influence with every choice we make. Choosing one direction means more than not choosing another direction; it also means letting that other direction play out on its own, without our input or effort, to outcomes independent of choices we might have made.

This is the only way to live, then: investing our whole being in the opportunities we feel compelled to pursue and entrusting all the other potential projects and relationships to the bright stars who will take them who are not us.

I’m gaga over baseball at the minute because my Kansas City Royals are two games away from winning the World Series. These days it is my favorite activity to read sports writers and listen to sports radio personalities marvel at KC’s unique contact-based attack. They don’t strike out. They don’t hit many balls in the air. They’re relentless in a way baseball hasn’t seen in a long time.

It’s a lot of fun to watch.

The Royals have found a winning formula, but those don’t last forever. The losers’ column is littered with yesterday’s winning formulas. Swinging at everything is working now, but next year? The year after that?

In our work, we may find a formula for success for a time, but it seems like we can’t expect those to last forever, or even for very long. There are so many other contextual factors that are making your youth group or food pantry ministry work right now that are not under our control and that may yet change.

So maybe the real skill we need to develop is the ability to read the signs and to know when our formula needs to change.

(hat tip to Landon Whitsitt for this one)

The leader of the free world welcomed the U.S. women’s soccer team to the White House yesterday after that team won the World Cup last summer. In his remarks during the ceremony, the President said, “This team taught all America’s children that ‘playing like a girl’ means you’re a badass…”

Badass.

Bad. Ass.

“Playing like a girl” means you’re a badass.

I wrote a post a while ago about female Presbyterian leaders I’m learning from, so President Obama’s use of “badass” yesterday makes me wonder if the same thing is true of “leading like a girl” as is “playing like a girl,” if the former means you’re a badass in the same way as does the latter. Because the component virtues of badassness (toughness, resilience, assertiveness) are more easily celebrated on the athletic field than in the pulpit, aren’t they? Isn’t it true that for a woman to lead like a badass, especially in the church, still, in 2015, unfairly subjects her to that other descriptor beginning with “B?”

And yet the female leaders I’ve worked with in the church are all badasses in some way. They’re not jerks or bullies or egomaniacs, charges they–more so than their male counterparts–may hear as a result of their confident leadership. Still, they don’t soft-pedal, and they don’t diminish. They lead with conviction, and they take risks for the sake of their work.

And yet the call to leadership in the church, for women and men alike, is not a call to badassery qua badassery. The baddest badasses employ loads of restraint, compassion, and listening to go with their bold talk. The central paradox of Christian discipleship–strength in weakness; wisdom in foolishness; life in death–informs badass leadership far more than some American cultural norm of imposing your will on others.

No doubt that paradox is loaded with cultural baggage for women in church leadership positions that men aren’t asked to carry. So I’m learning a lot from those who I see carrying it like badasses.

Because I want to be a badass too.