Seeds for 06/19/2023 - Matthew 6:25-27
Scripture: 25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?”
Observation: Worrying about money and the basic needs that money can afford is so common to the human race. Most of us have lost sleep over this at some point in our lives, to one degree or another.
Jesus seems to ask the impossible: “do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear.” Are you kidding me? Is Jesus really instructing us to rise each day with no idea about how we will be clothed and fed?
This is striking, but Jesus seems to double down by appealing to God’s care for the birds of the air, who “do not sow or reap ore store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not more valuable than they?” How are we to make sense of Jesus’ words?
It seems to me that the second occurrence of the word “worry” is key. We can see that this set of verses is bookended by references to “worry”: “do not worry about your life” and “Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?”
Reading them together, Jesus is not speaking of appropriate concern and normal taking of responsibility for oneself. In modern terms, Jesus is not coming out against “adulting.”
When He speaks of worry here He’s talking about anxiety-fueled, striving for control over everything, as if we are our own ultimate providers. We are made in the image of God, given the fruit of the earth for our sustenance and stewardship of creation as our responsibility before God. But responsible care isn’t worrying, it’s simply doing one’s job. We can do our job joyfully because we can trust and know that while we engage in our God-given work, God is working both through us and independently of us to bless and provide for our needs.
Worrying is something different. Jesus captures it vividly in His final comment: “Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” Worrying believes that its all up to us. No divine-human cooperation. We must take on not only our responsibility, but all responsibility. This is the sort of attitude that threatens to crush our spirit. But the solution isn’t pseudo-spiritual laziness. Trust is the opposite of worry. Therefore, we work and do our part as beings made in the Image of Almighty God, fully trusting that God is faithful to work everything out for our good, in His good time.
Application:
What do you worry about that you could with walking with God through?
What else might the Holy Spirit be speaking with you about in the text today?
Prayer: Lord, help me live by faith, not fear. Teach me to work without worry, but with trust that you are good and that every good and perfect gift comes from you. Amen.
“But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.” (Matthew 13:23)
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I think we are all a bit like “control freaks” with our lives instead of methodically moving forward with faith and the knowledge that God is with us in every decision we make.