Don't Borrow Trouble

Photo by Sinitta Leunen

Growing up, when the situation called for it, my father used to tell me a story about a man who sold a horse. As the story went, following the transaction, when the man returned to his home, he received word from the man who bought his horse that he needed to see him again immediately. The horse seller arranged to meet with the buyer later that day.

At first, the seller was simply curious what his buyer could possibly want. There was nothing wrong with the horse, they happily agreed on the price, and the buyer seemed quite pleased with his purchase.

Giving it further thought, the seller then began to speculate that the buyer might renege. He said to himself, “Why did this guy waste my time? What kind of idiot goes through the trouble of making a purchase like this only to change his mind right after the deal has been made?”

As the seller was traveling to meet with the buyer for the second time, he became increasingly infuriated. Convinced by this point that he was going to be defrauded, he imagined that the buyer probably injured the horse through his own carelessness and would claim that the horse was defective upon purchase. He’d demand his money back and return a now damaged horse.

Mere moments from the buyer’s house, the seller had grown fully enraged. Finally arriving, he pounded on his door. The buyer opened it. The seller screamed at the top of his lungs, “You worthless crook, how dare you try to cheat me!”

Puzzled, the buyer said, “You dropped your wallet before you left earlier today. I thought you might want it back.”

The moral of the story goes without saying.

I do not believe God is the cause lying behind everything that happens. The world is complex, and it often enough presents us with unfortunate—even dire—circumstances. But while God is not the agent inflicting those circumstances upon us, in these times the biblical witness tells us to seek out God, who, as being sovereign over the world, is intricately involved in our experience.

Accordingly, when seeming trouble looms ahead it is not uncommon or necessarily inappropriate for people of faith to wonder what God will do in and through it.

That being so, for some, if this perceived trouble continues to encroach, simple curiosity can give way to serious concern that God isn’t acting in the way that they think he should. As more time passes and the impending trouble appears undeterred, serious concern might turn to outright anger that God has not put a stop to it.

If, after still more time and brooding, such persons become convinced of certain disaster, anger can give way to despair and despair to apathy. God, they reason, has let them down.

Yet, sometimes, what we have constructed in our minds—a catastrophe of some proportion—is only that—a construct of our minds. And all the rumination, all the stress, all the blaming of God for letting this thing happen was unnecessary.

It should go here without saying, but I will do so anyway. Don’t borrow trouble from tomorrow. In the end, it may never come.