“They couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance” are the last words of Colonel John Sedgewick during the US Civil War. Memorable, but stupid! I love looking up famous last words, and was delighted today by Alexei Navalny’s last words in his autobiography.
Navalny was a Russian opposition politician, poisoned with the infamous Novichok. He was treated in Germany, but returned to Russia where he was imprisoned. Three years later he died in suspicious circumstances (like many of Putin’s enemies). Navalny’s last words, at the end of his book, Patriot, are a passage on how not to worry. He knew that he would likely be killed and wrote about the pointlessness of worrying about it. They are a masterclass in how the Christian faith can be the antidote to worry.
He wrote that faith makes life simpler, then asked, “But are you a disciple of the religion whose founder sacrificed himself for others, paying the price for their sins? Do you believe in the immortality of the soul and the rest of that cool stuff? If you can honestly answer yes, what is there left for you to worry about? Why, under your breath, would you mumble a hundred times something you read from a hefty tome you keep in your bedside table? Don’t worry about the morrow, because the morrow is perfectly capable of taking care of itself. My job is to seek the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and leave it to good old Jesus and the rest of his family to deal with everything else. They won’t let me down and will sort out all my headaches. As they say in prison here: they will take my punches for me.”
That’s a phenomenally helpful set of last words. First, he asks if his readers have put their trust in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ to know God personally. That’s the foundation. If the reader has, there is nothing left to worry about. Eternity is secure.
I had a season of great worry twenty years ago and a friend asked me at the time “Will you still be worrying about this in 500 years?… No, then why are you worrying about it now?” That is incredibly freeing. There is literally no point worrying about what might happen.
Navalny used the words of Christ – don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Holocaust survivor Corrie Ten Boom once said that “Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength.” Leave worrying about tomorrow for tomorrow. And to help us today, the Apostle Peter exhorts us to “Cast all our anxieties on Him, for he cares for us.”
Our days are better spent as Navalny encouraged seeking the Kingdom of God and his righteousness and not worrying about the rest!
Andy Moyle
The Gateway Church