The Visionary Worrywart

By blogger, Author & Book Reviewer Tim Challies

Running ScaredWe all have some familiarity with that deep, gnawing, pit-of-the-stomach anxiety, that stubborn worry that refuses to abate. The cause and effect may be a little different for each one of us, but we all have a time and a place and set of circumstances that causes us to be anxious.

In his book Running Scared, Ed Welch makes 4 fascinating observations about worriers and their brand of vision-casting.

Worriers Live in the Future

Running Scared CDWorriers live in the future. We are all people of the past, present and future, and worry has a way of spanning all three time zones. Fear is often triggered by past events, then reacts to crises in the present, and anticipates their consequences in the future. Fear’s preference, though, is to point you to the future, and to do this it relies upon the power of imagination.

We tend to think that imagination is the realm of the child, but it is equally the realm of the worrier. We have imaginations so we can consider things that do not yet exist. We admire people with expansive imaginations as visionaries, people who are able to look ahead and anticipate the trajectory of the nation, of the church, of the business, or of the individual. The worrier is a visionary too, in that he sees, or thinks he sees, the future, and what it will bring. He lives in the future. He creates a vision of the future, he transplants himself there in his mind, and he feels all the traumatic emotions associated with it.  Read More…

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