Worry is not concern, but distress of mind.  Some one said to me at the close of a talk on worry, “some folks ought to worry more.”  Of course he meant that some people should bear their share of the responsibilities of life, instead of selfishly and lazily shirking them.  There is a proper concern about matters for which we are responsible.  A man never makes a good speech unless there is a feeling of concern, of apprehension lest there be failure in that for which he is pleading.  A strong sensitive spirit feels the responsibility and does the best to meet it.  Worry is mental distress.  It is sinking under the sense of responsibility.  It is yielding to the fear that there may be failure, instead of gripping the lines and whip and determining to ride down the chance of its coming.

Sometimes worry is carrying to-morrow’s load with to-day’s strength; carrying two days in one.  It is moving into to-morrow ahead of time.  There is just one day in the calendar of action; that’s to-day.  Planning should include a wide swing of days; wise planning must.  But action belongs to one day only, to-day.

    “Build a little fence of trust
      Around to-day;
    Fill the space with living work
      And therein stay;
    Look not through the sheltering bars
      Upon to-morrow;
    God will help thee bear what comes
      Of joy or sorrow.”

    “Live for to-day, to-morrow’s sun
      To-morrow’s cares will bring to light,
    Go like the infant to thy sleep
      And heaven thy morn shall bless.”

A Lord of the Harvest.

Sometimes worry is carrying a load that one should not carry at all.  I think it was Lyman Beecher who said that he got along very comfortably after he gave up running the universe.  Some good earnest people are greatly concerned about the way things in the world are going, I’m obliged to confess to some pretty serious blunders there.  It seemed to me that there was so much to be done, so many people needing help, so much of wrong and sin to fight that I must be ever pushing and never sleeping.  I had to sleep of course; but all my burden, which meant the burden of the world’s need as I saw it, was lugged faithfully to bed every night.  There was a lot of pillow-planning.  But I found that the wrinkles grew thick, and the physical strength gave out, and yet at the end of vigorous campaigning there seemed about as much left to do as ever.

Then one day my tired eyes lit upon that wondrous phrase, “the lord of the harvest.”  It caught fire in my heart at once.  “Oh! there is a Lord of the harvest,” I said to myself.  I had been forgetting that.  He is a Lord, a masterful one.  He has the whole campaign mapped out, and each one’s part in helping mapped out too.  And I let the responsibility of the campaign lie over where it belonged.  When night time came I went to bed to sleep.  My pillow was this, “There is a Lord of the harvest.”