Anxious...

 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:6-7)

 

This verse has been featured or mentioned a number of times recently, but it came up on Biblegateway.com, so let us return to it from a slightly different perspective. The Koine (Greek) term used for anxious is μεριμνατε, (transliterated merimnate.) It might be a false cognate, but in my mind, that connects to the concept of marinading something. It’s about stewing in one’s juices, as it were, and I think that describes our general behavior when we are anxious.

When I checked the etymology of the English word anxious, I found something interesting. It entered the English language in the 17th century, from the Latin term anxius (which was derived from another Latin term, angere ‘to choke’.)

Naturally, I looked up the etymology of anger. It comes from German: "hostile attitude, ill will, surliness" (also "distress, suffering; anguish, agony," a sense now obsolete), from Old Norse angr "distress, grief, sorrow, affliction," from Proto-Germanic *angaz (from PIE root *angh- "tight, painfully constricted, painful"). Cognate with German Angst. Sense of "rage, wrath" is early 14c. It’s interesting that the etymology specifically mentions angst which adds another link between anger and anxiety.

All of these highly emotional terms seem to be related and go back to the image of being choked or perhaps forced through a very narrow (choked) area. This brings to mind my contention that when we are in pain, our universe shrinks down to the size, shape, and source of the pain. In other words, it chokes us or constricts us, just as anxiety, anger, and angst are described as doing.

Now, what leads us to feel choked. In some cases, it involves our having no choices. In others, it involves our having too many choices and no clear direction. The passage gives us a clear direction. We’re to take the matter to God in prayer and petition with thanksgiving. The thanksgiving at the end is designed, I suspect, to get us to release our chokehold on the situation and ourselves.