The God Box

Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you. --1 Peter 5:7

I am a worrier by nature.  Both of my daughters frequently thank me, with sarcasm, for passing on that trait to them.  I tend to work myself up into a frenzy by imagining the very worst possible scenarios and then try to calm myself by figuring out how I will handle them if they happen.

 Years ago I attended a weekly support group.  Inevitably, when one of the group members shared that he or she was worrying about something, someone in the group would speak up and say, “Put it in your God Box.” I had never heard of a God Box before, but I deduced that this was just a way of telling the person to stop worrying and trust in God.  As time went on, however, I began to realize that the people in the group were speaking of a literal box.  The idea was to get a box, like a shoe box, and create your own personal “God Box”, as plain or as fancy as you desired; then, you were to take a piece of paper and write whatever was bothering you on the paper.  If you had more than one thing troubling you, you were to write each issue as specifically as possible on a separate piece of paper and deposit it in the box.  This represented letting go of your vain efforts to control whatever was worrying you and releasing the problem to the control of the One who actually had the power to do something about your situation.  Then, whenever you found yourself starting to worry about one of the problems you had placed in the box, you were to stop immediately and remind yourself that it was in the God Box and it belonged to Him now and you could not touch it. I agreed with the notion of surrendering troubles to God but I admit I thought the literal box idea was silly and unnecessary.

I decided that I would practice my own mental form of the God Box.  I was certain it would work just as well. I simply pictured myself putting the thing that was troubling me into an imaginary box. If I was fretting over finances, I put it in the imaginary box.  When I was troubled by a relationship, I conjured up the image of dropping that worry into the box in my mind.  I felt smugly superior to those who felt the need to have a literal prop.  And it worked, for maybe the first hour. Then I was back to worrying as obsessively as ever.

Pride kept me resistant for quite awhile. But one day, when I felt the world was falling apart around me, I decided it might be worth a try.  Since I still wasn’t totally on board, I searched for the smallest box I could find and came up with a ring box.  Then I cut tiny strips of paper and in my smallest writing I wrote my worries on them, folded them, dropped them in the tiny box, snapped it shut and hid it in my nightstand. 

An hour or so passed and I found myself thinking about one of my problems. Suddenly, I remembered placing that piece of paper in the ring box – the GOD box – and I firmly reminded myself that the problem was no longer mine, it was his, and I couldn’t touch it.  Then an amazing thing happened. I suddenly felt a tremendous sense of relief! I truly felt that I had given that problem to God in some kind of a binding way; that the issue was his to handle now, not mine.  I was flooded with a peace I hadn’t experienced in quite awhile. God had everything in his capable hands, I could relax.

I can’t say I was perfect after that, and never worried again. There were many times, especially when things weren’t going the way I wanted, that I would struggle, but at those times the God Box served another purpose.  I would open the ring box (yes, I kept that box as a reminder of how arrogant I had been) and pull out some of the older slips of paper and read them.  Time and again I would be reminded of how faithfully God had dealt with each one of those issues and my trust in his love and power would be restored.

At the start of this New Year, if you struggle with worry like I do, I encourage you to create your own God Box.  Let me know how it works for you.