Expect joy. You have had enough of expecting gloom. The attention you put on warding off untoward events is extraordinary. Sometimes it seems that your guiding star is catastrophe. Often you act as if you are down to the wire when you are in actuality flying high.

Consider all the energy you put into worry. You say you are being realistic. I say you are frittering life away when you worry. Worry doesn't buffer life. It avoids life. It is its own little frenzy. There is no point to it, beloveds. What does worry do that joy can't do better?

You may give lip service to the fact that I am the Doer, which I am, yet you run around as if life depended upon you. Of course, life does depend on your thoughts. According to your thoughts, so goes the world. I encourage you to adopt new thoughts. Let your thoughts come from a throne, not a footstool or curb on the street.

In a world given by God, I would wish to ask you: "What is there to worry about?" I won't ask you that, however, because you have a long list you would recount, affirming all kinds of causes for your worriedness, all the possible loss and lack that could be around the corner, just waiting for you. So, I will ask you: "What can worry thoughts do but propound more worry?" Worry is a track you get on, and it's hard to get off. It goes around in circles.

When good comes to you, then you have another cause for worry, because you think: "What if it doesn't last? What if I lose it? What if it is taken away from me? What if I can't pay my taxes?"

Worry has many lists. It is like the freeway with many lanes, and you swerve from one to the other. Freeways go somewhere, however, whereas worry thoughts just keep going around the same track. Once on the worry track, it is hard to find the end to it.

But, fortunately, worry does have an end to it, and you can find it.

When you find your mind is asking, "What if this and that horror should befall?" give it a happy subject to think about instead. For instance, think: "What if all my dreams are coming true? What if I am healthy and strong? What if I have all kinds of rewards waiting for me around the corner? What if this is my lucky day? And what if tomorrow is too, and all the tomorrows are!"

Beloved, what if you are a special messenger of God with other things to think about and other things to do than worry? What advantage is there in worrying about what might or might not occur and how incapable you may feel you are to deal with them?

The thing is: you can only deal with what is right in front of you. If there is a mosquito biting you now, you can slap it. Right now you can't slap the one that will get in your door a few minutes from now. You already know that, yet you continue to worry, as if worry were a magic chant that wards off misfortune. I suggest that if you worry, you have picked the wrong chant.

What if I am with you always? In lean times as well as well as in fat? What if it's really true that no ill can befall you, even when one of the many-named ills seems to befall you? What if all is well even when it seems it is not? What if you are a mighty child of God who will keep his eye on Heaven? What if you could be worry-less by whistling a different tune?