'Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.' Matthew 6:34
How many remember Bobby McFerrin’s reggae song, Don’t Worry Be Happy? It is a happy little tune with whistling an excellent beat. In the song, McFerrin talks about all these bad things that may happen, but you shouldn’t let them affect your happiness when they do. Here is just one verse:
Now there, is this song I wrote
I hope you learned note for note
Like good little children, don't worry, be happy
Now listen to what I said, in your life expect some trouble
When you worry you make it double
But don't worry, be happy, be happy now
We only need to turn on the news to find items that might cause worry; COVID variants, shootings, inflation, wars, and rumors of wars. We are inundated with this bad news each day. In Jesus’s time, they were fortunate enough not to be constantly bombarded with all these negative messages, but then like now, they had all the usual everyday anxieties.
Jesus gives this advice (25-27), “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 clothes? 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? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” (25-27)
While it is our human tendency to worry and fret, we have faith in every circumstance that God will provide. We trust in God, our heavenly Father, who loves his children and does not want us to be anxious and stressed out. Instead, he wants us to place our worries, anxieties, stresses, and troubles at his feet.
Heavenly Father, every day you provide for us, sometime in the most surprising ways, and we give you thanks. Forgive us when we take this for granted and for when we fail to put our trust in you. Help us remember you extend an open invitation to come to you with our anxieties and worries. We pray in the name of your Son and our co-heir Jesus in union with the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Shalom,
Pastor Tim
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