Issue 224
One of the most prevalent diseases in today’s culture is ‘hurry’ sickness. Everything is quick and we have to keep up. Woe to those who are slow, for they shall be left behind, but blessed are the quickest for they shall forge ahead. The result is a chasing after the non-essential and fretting over the imaginary. It is ironic that ‘hurry’ and ‘worry’ sound the same, for we chase after time and call it time management, when Jesus reminds us that you cannot add one hour to your life this way.
We run after a lifestyle of food and drink and clothing, forgetting that it is not all down to us to provide for ourselves. There is a God who knows how to manage the supply chain.
Before you delete this piece as out of touch, you might like to ask whether you have worried about anything this last week. If you have, the chances are that it was a future-focused worry. It was about something that might happen. If it did happen you might appear in a bad light or fall short or lose out. Worry is always about tomorrow and it is always a waste of energy. It is always about the personal consequences or impact of an imagined disaster on my reputation, career, lifestyle or finances. It is a concern about things not turning out well. So we run after status, security, finances, image and well-being, and panic if we think we can’t catch them.
But Jesus advocates seeking, not worry: seeking the rule of God and the right ways of God. Seeking means searching out, exploring, reflecting, analysing and questioning in order to ask “what is the Kingdom issue here?” What is the God-pleasing approach? It’s not a bland formulaic lifestyle but it’s where the action is. If you engage in that action then God will deal with the other stuff and free you up to live at the right level. Stop running and start seeking;then you can stop grasping because things will be given. It’s hard enough to make it through the day without running after the wind. “After all” as the Carpenter said “each day has enough trouble of its own”.
Matthew 6:25-34
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 important than food, and the Body more important 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 Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?
28 “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30 If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 31 So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
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Geoff Shattock
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