Today's Daily Lesson comes from Matthew chapter 6 verses 25 through 34:
25 ‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26Look 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? 27And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?28And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, 29yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. 30But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 31Therefore do not worry, saying, “What will we eat?” or “What will we drink?” or “What will we wear?” 32For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 33But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
34 ‘So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today."
Reports this morning of another mass shooting, this time with 50 plus dead and who knows how many wounded. What a day of sadness. What a season of sorrow.
Evil is now armed in very powerful ways. Whether it be with assault rifles, or bombs, or even vans, terror is armed.
This morning's Daily Office includes words from Paul writing at the end of an age. He says, "The present form of the world is passing away," (1 Corinthians 7:31). Indeed it is. We live in a vastly different time than we did before 9-11. We live in a vastly scarier time. We live in the age of armed madness. The old world has passed away, and some feint from foreboding of what world may be coming.
And then Jesus comes to us also in today's Daily Office with words of Gospel. "Do not worry about tomorrow." "Watch the birds migrating in October." "Consider the grass still alive as the world slips into Fall." In other words, Jesus says, "Do not be consumed by evil on the news. Do not be dismayed about tomorrow. Be where you are today. Be present to your today. Be alive today."
After the mass shooting in the Pulse night club in Florida, I was separated from my family at a camp and weighed down by fear about all that was and was to be. I was standing in my room, reading the wall, when suddenly I saw a poem by Wendell Berry. It seemed like a poem for the day at hand. It seems like a poem for this sorrowful day also.
It is called "The Peace of Wild Things":
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
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