Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on.
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 being anxious, can add one cubit to his span of life?
And why are you anxious 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 arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, oh men of little faith?
Therefore do not be anxious, saying, "What shall we eat?" or "What shall we drink?" or "What shall we wear?" For the goyim do all these things; and your Father knows you need them all.
But seek first His kingdom, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be yours as well.
Do not be anxious about tomorrow; for tomorrow will be anxious about itself. Let the day's own trouble be sufficient for the day.
2 comments:
When I was young and stressed, I used to really rely on verses like these.
But later (and now), while I think Jesus was right to tell us not to worry,
some of his statements don't seem to fit the real world.
For instance, consider Jesus' words "Look at the birds of the air: They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; and yet your Heavenly Father feeds them."
But, of course in famines throughout world history, God didn't feed them, nor humans.
There is a very powerful Nature video (maybe by PBS?) which shows the horrors of starvation for animals and birds in Africa.
Yes, perfectly true in that context: Animals die; people die.
In the context in which people (and probably animals as well?) are not what we superficially take them for, what Jesus says is the simple truth. We know this intuitively, that is, spiritually -- but in this corrupt age we are mostly afraid to cop to it.
I've lost many good friends to death; and I don't see them anymore outside of occasional dreams; they can't play in the game we inhabit. But I've always known they were fine, in good hands.
The virtual stones I play go with are as happy in their virtual bowls as they ever were on the board. I hate to lose them; but to play a good game it helps to remember that 'Dead folks got not worries.'
Go stones, of course, are not sentient beings... We who are sentient can worry about becoming nonsentient -- but sentience is a great mystery; we can't (really _can't_) "explain" it plausibly as coming from any source other than itself, that is, from any source other than Spirit. It might conceivably change form -- but ceasing to exist?
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