Do Not Be Anxious About Anything

Paul begins the last stretch of the letter by piling up affection before he gets near what he wants to say.

Therefore, my brothers, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, that is how you must stand firm in the Lord, my beloved.

Brothers he loves and longs for, his joy and his crown. None of it is padding put there to fill a line. What comes next is going to sting a little, and he sets the love down in front of it rather than after.

Then he names two people. Euodia and Syntyche are women of that church, and they are about to hear their own disagreement read out to the church. He asks them to agree with each other in the Lord.

What the argument was about, the letter never says. He takes no side and gives no hint that one of them was right. He says instead that they contended at his side for the gospel, which puts them among his fellow workers rather than among the difficult people, and then he asks a third person in the church to go and help the two of them.

Earlier in the letter he had asked the whole church to be like-minded, to have the same love, to be united in spirit and purpose, and named nobody at the time. The appeal to these two women gives that earlier call a setting. Paul does not say it was his reason, and he does not say why the names come only now.

Then the command that runs all the way through the letter. Rejoice in the Lord always, and then he says it again. From prison. About a church with a quarrel in it. Let your gentleness be plain to everybody, he adds. The Lord is near.

Be anxious for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.

There is a swap inside that sentence. Nothing on one side and everything on the other, and whatever you were carrying goes across. Thanksgiving is in the list too, and it is the item that costs something when you are frightened, because it means finding something to be glad about while the thing you dread is still standing there.

And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Guard is a soldier's word, and he is writing under guard. He does not promise that the thing you are anxious about gets sorted out. He promises that something takes up a position around your heart and mind and stays there while the matter is unsettled.