Hope in the Midst of Anxiety

Chapter 2 You’re Only Human

If you have a Bible nearby, do me a favor and open it up to Isaiah 30. Let’s spend a few minutes looking at an anxious episode in the life of God’s people and their righteous king—one of the best, in fact—King Hezekiah.

It’s a frightening time. The empire of Assyria to the northeast threatens the small southern kingdom of Judah whose king, Hezekiah, is doing everything he can to protect and fortify the city. Imagine for a moment that rampant flooding is impacting your region in the midwest, and a river near your home is swelling to record levels. You’d begin preparing, wouldn’t you? In the best of ways, your anxiety might mobilize you to fill sandbags or build a barrier or stock provisions. Sometimes, faithfulness looks like something more than a prayer of “protect me, Lord,” but requires action. Hezekiah sprung into action.

I can’t get into Hezekiah’s head, but I’d assume that like any good and wise leader who loves his people, he’s anxious. We also know that Hezekiah battled an illness that left him nearly dead (2 Kings 20) sometime during this anxious season. Now, if I were administering a stress test, the righteous king would likely check a good number of boxes. This was a challenging season, not merely with the prospect of his own death, but the destruction of his city and his people. Hezekiah was a great king, but he was merely human, prone to the same fears we experience.

We’re not entirely sure how much Hezekiah was involved in the directive to send ambassadors to Egypt for assistance in Isaiah 30, but if you read the first two verses it’s clear God isn’t pleased with the decision. The words “alliance” and “security” and “refuge” (in my NRSV version) indicate that they’re looking to Egypt as a kind of security blanket, something you’d do if you were a child. And perhaps you know the backstory—Egypt plays a rather significant role in the life of God’s people, as a once–protector–become–oppressor from whom the Israelites fled. Hezekiah’s ambassadors are reversing the Exodus journey to get help from their former slave–masters. They’re being childish, looking for a security blanket that worked for a season but can’t possibly help now.

How do you cope in times of profound anxiety? I can think of some poor choices I’ve made over the years. And I remember feeling some shame and embarrassment because of it. If you read on in Isaiah 30 (vv. 3–5), you’ll see the humiliation and shame resulting from this ill–advised decision. In fact, the remainder of the passage shows the stubborn back–and–forth of one who tries to bargain with God, of one who tries to remedy their anxiety apart from God’s help and provision. One particularly poignant image shows up in verse 13 where Isaiah says,

therefore this iniquity shall become for you

like a break in a high wall, bulging out, about to collapse,

whose crash comes suddenly, in an instant.

I once had an addict I was working with say that this perfectly describes the crash after a season of self–medicating through alcohol, the bulging crack that gives out and comes collapsing down. Sometimes our anxious ways of coping wreak havoc in unexpected ways.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. If you step back for a moment, you’ve got to reckon with the fact that all of this happened on good king Hezekiah’s watch. Faithful Hezekiah was known for his obedience, for tearing down idols and cleaning up the streets, for returning his people to the worship of Yahweh. In other words, he was one of the best. And yet, one of the best also struggled. Like you. And like me. Even amidst his obedience, hard things continued to happen to him and to his people.

And that’s comforting to me. Hezekiah was human. He was fragile, insecure, and anxious like me.

I was telling a friend about my panic attacks when he surprised me with a thought that felt heretical, at first. He said, “Is it consoling at all to remember that Jesus experienced anxiety, too?”

What?

He reminded me of the Garden of Gethsemane, when Luke writes about Jesus, “And being in anguish…his sweat became like drops of blood, falling down upon the ground” (Luke 22:44, NASB). Jesus prayed fervently to God prostrate on the ground, pleading for the cup to pass from him, clearly in distress according to Mark. Mark describes Jesus as deeply distressed and troubled, crying out, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death” (Mark 14:33–34, NIV).

And suddenly, my theological training provides clarity—Jesus was fully human. Like me. Like you. Jesus felt things that you and I feel—sadness and anger and confusion and distress and powerlessness. And anxiety.

Maybe God meets you and me in our humanity. It is helpful to remember that anxiety isn’t a curse for our disobedience or a sign that there is something fundamentally wrong with us. Maybe God meets us here.

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