Chew on worry or is worry chewing on you?

I have a Boxer. She's a rescue and she's older but she still has some habits that must have come when she was a stray. One of those habits is she will find a stick in the yard and begin to chew on it. She will gnaw on that piece of wood like it was all she had to eat. Sometimes she will carry it to a "safe" place and leave it for a few minutes but then she'll find her way back to it...carry it off to begin gnawing and chewing and tearing at it again.

She doesn't get any food value from chewing that stick...she doesn't change it to something else like a bed or a Comfort. The stick may get mangled but it doesn't really become anything of value for her. Daisy (that's her name) has spend most of a day on a stick like that...no time to sniff things, no time to beg for treats, no time to sit at the knee of her master...just time to gnaw and tear and chew on that thing.

( Before anyone wants to chastise me or Daisy for chewing a stick...and all of the harm that can come from that...I know she shouldn't do that but Daisy doesn't. )

Now, does that sound like what we do with our worry? We grab onto something (like what if the house burns down or if something happens to my family) we can't really change and we gnaw at it, or let it gnaw at us. We carry it around like it was a prize when it really is the opposite, it's something that actually causes us harm. That's the very definition of worry. The Lord felt like it was so much a problem for His children that he left us a very straight forward scripture about worry...

"Don't worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God's peace, which exceeds anything we can understand." Philippians 4:6

With Daisy all I need to do is sternly tell her "Drop it" and she does...and before she can pick it up again, I replace it with a toy or treat . So, in the name of God's peace I say to you, "DROP IT!" stop gnawing and worrying what you can't change and experience God's peace that exceeds anything we can understand..

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