Jesus said to his disciples:
“No one can serve two masters.
He will either hate one and love the other,
or be devoted to one and despise the other.
You cannot serve God and mammon.
“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 clothing?
Look at the birds in the sky;
they do not sow or reap, they gather nothing into barns,
yet your heavenly Father feeds them.
Are not you more important than they?
Can any of you by worrying add a single moment to your life-span?
Why are you anxious about clothes?
Learn from the way the wild flowers grow.
They do not work or spin.
But I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor
was clothed like one of them.
If God so clothes the grass of the field,
which grows today and is thrown into the oven tomorrow,
will he not much more provide for you, O you of little faith?
So do not worry and say, ‘What are we to eat?’
or ‘What are we to drink?’ or ‘What are we to wear?’
All these things the pagans seek.
Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.
But seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness,
and all these things will be given you besides.
Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself.
Sufficient for a day is its own evil.”
It is said that the one thing that Jesus repeats in the bible more than any other thing is “do not be afraid” or some variant thereof. It is said 366 times, one for every day of the year plus leap year. Why does He repeat this so often, because humans are perpetual worriers. We worry about everything, our children, our homes, our communities, our countries, the world! We are constantly worrying. This is why Jesus tells us “Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself. Sufficient for a day is its own evil.”
We are not to worry about the future, today has enough things to deal with. Further, He is telling us that if you only think about the future when will you have time to think about God. The church father Theophylact of Orchid explains it this way: “‘The evil of the day’ means the crushing burden and pressure [of life]. It is sufficient for you that you are afflicted by today’s burden. If you also take thought for tomorrow, and continually burden yourself for the sake of bodily things, when will you have time for God?”
Jesus does not want this for us. Worry is detrimental to our happiness, especially worry about the future. Worry betrays a lack of trust…, in ourselves, in our station, but mostly in God. In this passage He talks about the birds of the air and the flowers of the field, and how they live without worry, God feeds them and cares for them, they thrive, and are adorned in beauty every spring. How much more is His love for us? And how much more does He want to have an even greater relationship with us?
But how do we reconcile this teaching with Genesis, when God told Adam and Eve that they would toil and work every day of their lives. They actually had a relationship in the garden with God, that is very similar to how the birds and the flowers live. They were completely taken care of. But when they sinned they broke all of that, they chose themselves over God, and they lost their trust in Him. They brought all of this pain and struggle and worry into their own lives.
But that does not mean we have to have the same fate. We don’t have to choose ourselves, but we can instead trust in God, and break that cycle of original sin. That is what Jesus is teaching us today, the way to find our way back to the garden, and our way back into relationship with Him. We only need to put down our sin, choose His will for our lives, over our own, and to trust that in all things He has our best interest in mind at all times. This seems so hard, and almost impossible in today’s world, and the world will call you crazy for believing it, but it is what we are called to do, and despite all the claims to the contrary, it is possible!
