Today's Daily Lesson comes from Luke chapter 12 verses 22 through 31:
22 He said to his disciples, ‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear.23For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. 24Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! 25And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? 26If then you are not able to do so small a thing as that, why do you worry about the rest? 27Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. 28But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you—you of little faith! 29And do not keep striving for what you are to eat and what you are to drink, and do not keep worrying. 30For it is the nations of the world that strive after all these things, and your Father knows that you need them.31Instead, strive for his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.
We take our children to the park and we look around at nature and we point into the sky. "God feeds the birds," we say. "And look how pretty the flowers are - God dresses them. So don't worry; the God will provide for you too."
We say this to our children and we want so badly for them to believe it. We want them to feel safe and secure and go about without worry.
But our own minds are less settled, our own spirits more troubled. We pay the bills and have to worry about insurance. We know about the real world and all its terrors. We could well say, "Yes, children, look at the birds of the air and the flowers of the field; but don't look too long - for they won't last. Soon they'll be gone."
Yet perhaps that's just the point. The lives of the birds of the air and the flowers of the field are but a hair's breadth in length. Still, they make the most of the time they have. The birds set off in flight, dancing left and right, swooping down towards the earth, ascending towards heaven. And the flowers dance in the field, blazing with a purple, even a king cannot afford. The birds soar. The flowers dazzle. They live! And they do not spend all day worrying about tomorrow. Life for them is short -- one brief season under the sun. They cannot make it longer by worrying.
Neither can we.
Last year, I was away from my home and family when yet another terrorist attack hit. I grieved and worried with the nation. I wanted to hug my children and tell them I love them. I wanted someone to hug me and tell me things were going to be okay. Then I noticed in the room I was sitting a framed poem by Wendell Berry 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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