November 30, 2023

TODAY’S SCRIPTURE READING:

“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” (James 1.27)

“With your worrying can any one of you add a single hour to your life?” (Matthew 6.27)

TODAY’S REFLECTION ON GOD’S WORD:

The futility of wasted effort. While the exercise may serve a purpose such as sharpening the mind in creative decision-making, could the energy be better spent? Perhaps. But, as Jesus is speaking to the entire crowd, this pivotal one sentence lesson stands out as pure wisdom. It is matter of fact. It is clear. It is undeniable. It is also rarely considered even though it is common sense. Hear it again: Who among you can add a single hour to your life by worrying? Birds of the air. Animals of the field. Flowers in the garden. Grass on the plain. Trees in the vale. Hillsides rising to mountains. Headwaters becoming rivers. Rivers fueling oceans. Who knows if any of these have the capacity to worry or fret apart from God? They may well worry and fret. But, the wisdom which Jesus offered to Jew and Gentile, rich and poor, young and old, male or female, wise and simple, commoner or royalty, slave or slave owner, Sadducee or Pharisee or Roman Procurator applies equally across the board. We do not benefit from worry.

And the beauty of that one line is that it does apply to all people. We all worry. Even when we know it doesn’t do us any good at all: we worry. We fret. We furrow our brows. We wring our hands. We elevate our heart rate. We increase the stress level of our brains. We put pressure on others around us to share in the moment of our chaos. We may worry for different reasons but in the end there is but one cause. The cause of worry is a lack of trust in God and a lack of belief in ourselves. Yes, it is a both/and cause. Trust in God and belief in ourselves (okay, some may like to say “belief in God and trust in ourselves” to play a semantic game) go hand in hand. If there is not the one, then the other is invalidated as well. We are called to “trust in the Lord and lean not on our own understanding.” (Proverbs 3) Jesus time and again confronts the petitioner for the miracle of healing with the necessity of “do you believe” and then follows it by “by your belief, faith has made it so or you well or as the petition was offered.” We have already visited the words of the man whose son threw himself in the fire even at the foot of Mount Tabor where Jesus was transfigured before Peter, James and John. When the remaining disciples were ineffective in bringing peace to the boy and thus calm to his father, Jesus stepped into the situation and activated the truth of faith. Asking the father “Do you believe?” the father responded “I believe but help me with my unbelief.” Apart from Christ we will never be 100%. How we need Jesus in our lives!

And Jesus often told His disciples to not be given to worry. At the last supper in the Upper Room on the night of His betrayal, He addressed them by saying “Do not be afraid. There is trouble in the world but I AM overcoming the world and its problems.” Do not be afraid is another way of saying “don’t worry.” Don’t invest in time that you can never get back. You cannot go back in time nor can you actually move the hands of the clock of your life forward (not even in daylight savings time of the soul). What can be done is to invest in the work and promise which has been given us by God. We can ask ourselves simply “Is this something God intended for me to wrestle with or has He already promised to provide what is needed. Until that provision comes, let me focus my attention on the work at hand and the ministry it produces.” The call to live simply by faith, believing that Heaven is our home, allows us to wander through those valleys of the shadow of death. Yes, it is appropriate to quote that portion of Psalm 23 here. In those times of worry, we are befriending the presence and essence of death. We might even say “I will just die if you don’t have this or that.” We know those times in our lives. Let’s repent of them and venture forth to move in a different direction. It is a direction with the emphasis on “God’s will be done on earth with us and in us as it is already in Heaven for us.”

PRAYER IN LIGHT OF GOD’S WORD:

Father, You have revealed to us best in Jesus the Christ. By Him and Him alone shall we gain this eternal life and our place in eternal rest, living for You always. Show us more and by Your Holy Spirit instruct us in the way we should go, the truth we should reveal and the life we shall live with you forever. In Jesus’ name, we pray. AMEN.