Be not anxious or fret to death
Over those things you can’t control;
You can’t a span add to your breath,
Nor bring nearer your distant goal.
What is to be must surely be,
Your anxious mind can’t change a thing;
But only time will make you see
You’re not the one who makes life swing.
You’re worried at the least of things –
Of things that should not bother you.
This kind of worry sadness brings,
And takes the joy from what you do.
Those things you ponder, count them all,
If not with shame will you be filled,
That things which matter not at all,
Your precious time with them is killed.
The changing weather, Nature’s work,
The way it goes you cannot say.
In you should not anxiety lurk –
Allow the weather go its way.
There is someone to visit you,
Him you expect and anxious be;
Such thoughts in you relinquish too,
For if he comes or not you’ll see.
Why anxious for your size and age,
And look to changing times with fear?
Recall this world is but a stage,
And nought on it can last fore’er.
You are anxious for your family,
Of how they’ll clothe and feed and fare;
From you such thoughts remove quickly –
What help should come they drive away.
You think of what money could buy
And fret because you can’t afford:
But why on earthly things rely
Instead of trusting in the Lord?
Consider lilies of the field:
They toil not, neither do they spin,
Yet their beauty is not revealed
To any nation’s king or queen.
Behold the fowls that fill the air:
They sow not, neither do they reap,
They gather not in barns nor care,
But still they eat and healthy keep.
How much of value then you are
Than fowls and lilies of the field,
That though the Lord for these does care
He will to you not all things yield!
- Victor Emmanuel Uwah, Poems from without, 1997
