"A Bird in Hand"
A wild painted bunting caught in my feeder; a free gift from God-- what life is really all about!
This morning in preparation for a ladies' class, I was studying Matthew 6:25-34, the part of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount that concerns worrying. A couple of new thoughts came to me, as new thoughts on old subjects so often do when studying God's Word.
One of the questions in this study* was "What are some common reasons why people worry?" I I fairly quickly filled in my blank: having enough money to keep a roof over our heads and to feed our families, losing our honor, whether we might inadvertently (or impulsively-- out of selfishness)hurt, disappoint, or neglect people. Then it hit me that maybe I had misinterpreted the question because this question had been covered in last week's chapter. Maybe what it really was asking was not what are common things that people worry about, but rather exactly what the question said: What are some of the common reasons why people worry? What- way down deep inside- makes us worry? What is that mechanism? What is the thought process?
Now, for a Christian, this is a question worth asking. I came up with three of my own:
1. I think there is something I could/should be doing but either I don't know what, or I know what, but I don't want to do that.
2. I am afraid I might not be tuned in to God closely enough to hear or see His guiding hand.
3. I don't trust myself to look honestly at what He is telling or showing me.
Ironically, then, I am less likely to worry when I have absolutely no control over my situation and I absolutely know that I do not. The worrisome times are those when I have some influence, some leeway to make some decisions, when what I decide might have a lot of impact on what hangs in the balance. This caused me to scratch my head and think about the blessedness of being at the end of my rope, of reaching the last resort, of the times when I come to the end of myself. But the reality is that most of life is not like that. Most of the time we are in places of decision. Sometimes those crossroads require a finely-tuned spiritual discernment. At those times when we seem between a rock and a hard place- the devil and the deep blue sea- we need to have a storehouse of God's wisdom to draw on. If I don't discipline myself daily to seek God's counsel-- even though I might not need a whole lot of it for that particular day of activities-- then when the tough times of decision come, I will not be ready. There is so much of the world's gravity pressing in all around and all the time; if we do not not fight back in an aggressive way we will not be able to make spiritual headway. I have lived through some times that have taught me never to think the weather is going to stay calm all day long just because the sun rose that morning into a cloudless sky. Storms can blow up suddenly. We must be ready.
And we must collect that readiness in the times when we are not particularly desperate or in dire straits. We must use the calm to prepare for the storm.
The second new thing I learned this morning was what Jesus might have meant when He asked the question, " Is not life more important than food and the body more important than clothes?" (He had just finished saying, "...do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear.") I guess all those other hundreds of times I had read this, I had focused so much on his command that I didn't pay any attention to this question He asked next. When I finally did this morning, I came up with an answer that gave new depth and dimension to this old, familiar passage that I thought I had pretty much figured out. Maybe Jesus is wanting us to think about what else life really involves besides just food and clothes. What about life can we enjoy apart from its tools and trappings ( food and clothes)? Those are just the accouterments, the accessories of life, not really life itself. Life itself is all about things that don't necessarily even require money, activities that are free for all-- like laughter, like listening to each others' stories, like watching our children and grandchildren play and learn new things, like visiting and revisiting, as often as we like, all those beautiful memories we have stored up, like enjoying God in nature, like lending a helping hand to someone who desperately needs one. Our lives, our bodies were given to us by God not just to be fed and dressed up but to be used and to be enjoyed. We all know this-- this is not rocket science-- and yet we can so easily fall onto the treadmill of using all our energy and worry over the accessories that we forget that there is a whole lot more to life than survival. Even those who are so busy or overworked that they feel like they are doing well just to survive need to rethink their days' activities: Wasn't there at least a little bit of time when an encouraging word could have been spoken in that busy work day? Wasn't there a few minutes the face could have turned upward, or outward or the ear and eye been a little more finely tuned to take in something lovely happening outside? Could Ihave lingered a minute over my lunch break to listen to a childhood memory of a friend or coworker? The reason we usually don't do these things is that we are spending those minutes either silently fretting or speaking about our worries over something related to these basic needs Jesus promises us that our Father will supply.
The third thought I had was really not my thought but the thought of Frederick Dale Bruner, author of The Christbook. He writes, " Only when we have been liberated from our own food and clothes-- a liberation devoutly to be desired in Western Christendom-- will we give necessary attention to the food and clothing of the Poor World around us. Thus Jesus' text is not antisocial; it is antiselfish. It does not tell us not to be unanxious about others' food, but to unanxious about our own. It does not preach indifference to society; it preaches a rejection of Christians' unbelieving anxiety about themselves and their circumscribed obsessions. Anxious care is the denial of God; it is acting as if we are alone in the world and that either there is no God or that He does not care." This is why Jesus warns us that we are acting like the pagans when we "run after all these things."
I am always so delighted, so thrilled-- and to be honest, shamefully surprised-- when as I am studying God's Word, suddenly newness flows from the old and from the familiar flows enlightenment. I am ashamed that I keep being surprised because I "know" and have taught for years that "the Word of God is living and active." It's a lot like yeast. Its message can always be depended upon to bring nourishment, but the size and dimension of it is ever new. It swells and changes shapes so as to fit into the current size hole we are dealing with and to shed light into the current blind spot we find ourselves in. A different perspective for a different day and need. Always living, always active, never stagnant, never used up, never just a bunch of pages between some protective covers. Of great import. The Word of God.
