“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by worrying can add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For it is the gentiles who seek all these things, and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today."
Matthew 6:25-34 (NRSVue)
As we think about salvation today, what is one of our biggest problems? What separates us from God?
Each age may have their own issues and sin within the human condition takes many forms. Is it possible in today's culture that anxiety may be at the forefront of what ails us?
How does being in Christ lead us to diffuse our stress and allow us to be fully who God is calling us to be?
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| Some birds and flowers are friends |
This is not that we don't have anything to wear or eat but that the variety is overwhelming us. As I think about the context of Jesus' preaching, the worries from his original congregation may have been, "Will we have anything to eat tomorrow?" or "My clothing is falling apart and I'm wearing my only clothes to work in."
The worries were closer to the subsistence side of things.
Does the advice on worry seem a bit tone deaf upon this second look?
It can except that Jesus didn't have any more than they did. He was a traveling preacher/healer who told his disciples not to take any supplies with them when they went out from town to town working. And they all came back!
How does this knowledge impact the things we worry about? I believe that the anxieties we face seem just as real to us today. But the advice of Jesus' doesn't really change.
What would it be like to take a breath and watch the birds for a moment? Or smell the roses?
As we think of worry or anxiety as fear, it is important to note that the first words out of the mouths of any of God's messengers in the Bible is "do not fear."
Maybe worry is something we could give up for the remainder of Lent.
Prayer for the day: Loving God, we seek to trust in you for the everyday. We must confess that our fears get the best of us at times and we do worry about the future. Help us to remember that you will walk with us through thick and thin. And may this give us a lightness of being. We pray this in the name of the Lord of Light. Amen.
Photo by Dennis Church via Flickr.com. Used under the Creative Commons license.
New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition. Copyright © 2021 National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
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