Yielding to The Master

by Boone Leigh, MA, LPC

Philippians 4:6 do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

This has been an interesting week for me. My wife and daughters left at the beginning of the week to go to Africa on a missions trip. I usually am not a very anxious person but I have found myself thinking about all the possible misfortunes that could befall them. The thoughts of plane crashes or rebel uprisings, kidnappings, strange and deadly African diseases, have been on my mind. Ultimately the root concern seems to be this, I don’t think I could live without my wife and daughters. The heartache of something happening to them seems intolerable and thus my anxiety over the possibility of something happening to them wants to overwhelm me. This is a reminder of what anxiety many times is, it is a desire to control what I cannot control. God was very gracious to me in providing a gentle reminder to me this week through the pen of the Puritan Samual Rutherford in a little book I have been reading called “The Loveliness of Christ”. ​

​“Take no heavier lift of your children, than the Lord alloweth; give them room beside 

your heart, but not in the yolk of your heart, where Christ should be. For then they are

your idols, not your bairns [children]. If you Lord take any of them home to his house 

before the storm come on, take it well, the owner of the orchard may take down two or 

three apples off his own trees, before midsummer, and ere before they get the harvest sun; 

and it would not be seemly that his servant, the gardner, should chide him for it.

Let the Lord pluck his own fruit at any season that he pleaseth; they are not lost to you,

They are laid up so well, as that they are coffered in heaven, where our Lord’s best jewels lie.” (p 34)

My children, my wife, and my life are not my own. The master of the orchard may do with them and me as He most wisely and graciously will. There is a great peace in not feeling like I need to control what I cannot control. The master of the orchard is in control, and he is a good master. 

Boone Leigh, MA, LPC
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