The Master Magician

I love to watch a skilled magician. Many of them call themselves illusionists. They can hold my attention for hours as they challenge my perceptions of reality and defy me to explain their sleight of hand and amazing tricks.

One of my good friends, Terry Hedges, is a master magician. He is brilliant with card tricks but he really freaks my mind with his tricks where you think one thing is happening but it’s really something else entirely. For example, he was showing me some of his coin tricks one time and, before I knew it, my wristwatch was on his wrist! I never knew it was gone!

So how did he do it? Terry was able to remove my watch from my wrist and attach it to his own by getting my attention on something else. I’m just thankful he’s my friend so I got my watch back!

There are other things in life that work the same way. They get your attention focused on something so much that you miss out on other things entirely.

Worry works just like that. As a form of fear, worry works just as a magician would in our lives to distract us and get all of our attention focused on the “what if” and “could be” while we are completely missing the “right now.”

One of the biggest things I learned (mostly because my wise mother told me) when I was going through some major storms in life is to do what’s right in front of me. It’s amazing what happens when we do that . . . when we stop looking down the road at things that haven’t even happened yet and instead focus on what’s right in front of us to be done and cared for and completed.

To get back to me and my friend Terry . . . if I had been watching my wrist the whole time the master magician had been entertaining and distracting me with gold coins and playing cards, he wouldn’t have been able to sneak that watch off my wrist. I would have known the second he started unfastening that buckle. (I think I could have spotted him . . . Terry’s an exceptional magician so I’m really just trying to make a point here!)

“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own” (Matt. 6:34, emphasis added). To apply this better to our lives, we might translate the word “trouble” in our minds as “responsibilities.”

When we spend all our time worrying about the “might be” we miss the “right now” of life. And many of those things that are in the “right now” are precious. They need tending and protecting and nurturing today, and we can’t do that effectively if we’re caught up in worry about things that haven’t and might never happen.

Pay attention to what’s right in front of you. Don’t let that old master magician Worry steal the watch off your wrist. He’s no friend . . . you might never get it back.