Carefree Friends of God
Scripture Matthew 6:24-34
Reading
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?
Look 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 and can any one of you by worrying
add a single hour to their span of life?
Consider the lilies of the field…
Reflection
Such a refreshing Gospel we have this week! A good tonic for the soul in these mid-winter days! To you, my friends, I say, ‘Do not worry about your life!’ A true friend of God has no cause to be afraid, neither from the forces outside of oneself or the forces within oneself. From without the world with all its glamours may try to make subtle attempts to lure us into external conformity with its standards. But their external show is all a mask, a pretense, an act – a spiritual disguise. Jesus guides us through the pressures of worrying about material things: all these, he says, food, clothing and enough possessions will be given you by my good and caring Father. Consider and observe- Jesus says - the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. Learn to become like them. They are carefree and trust in God. Learn the art of this carefreeness of soul and you will have nothing to fear.
Wherein lies the power of this fearlessness? It is God’s Word that tears off the mask of all pretense and false security and reveals the inner woman, the inner man – the real person. Rather, your "ALL THESE THINGS" must be born out of a sincere and genuine love and compassion. Just be still and know that I am God. Encounter the hidden potential within yourself – sink into its roots – into Me – hide in this secret place and my vitality, my power will activate the ‘yeast of love’. Yes, you are to be beautiful on the inside. This interior power of love casts out fears. Be clothed in this inner beauty. Let yourself soar and sing like the birds in springtime. They trust nature’s sun and warmth and the returning of spring, even when the trees are not yet in bud. Can we trust like that, even when we do not see the ‘new springtime’ emerging in our life situations?
From within oneself, Jesus assures his friends that they have no reason to fear even the One who knows the real you. The simple reason for their being unafraid is because “I am caring for you.” I have set My heart on you, so do not be afraid. “You are worth more than many sparrows.” Sparrows are a dime a dozen…yet not one falls from His loving attention. So extravagant is God’s love, so lavish God’s concern for us, that not even the minutest detail escapes God’s loving care.
No, there is no need to be afraid. It is I caring for you. You are My treasured one, precious in My sight. So cast your cares, your anxieties, your distractions, whatever is dividing you, upon Me. I have searched you out, been mindful of you. Yes, I have set My heart on you.
Every disciple of Jesus is called to live in this carefree relationship with God. Living in a carefreeness that is an unrestricted freedom of spirit. We start living without concern, without the effort, without the control, completely dependent upon the Other – letting God be done in us. As we continue living and traveling light, with all the excess baggage and clutter out of the way, we start to enjoy a liberty of spirit. We grow content to just be loving, without even the concern for what God may be doing, or what’s really happening to me. We find ourselves stopping worry and simply allowing life to be what it is. We don’t always have to fix those awkward and uncomfortable situations. Not everything needs to be resolved now. Sometimes, when we turn it over completely to God with a trusting care-free heart, we wait to see ‘how and when’ God moves through an impasse and ‘all these things’ come to some kind of peaceful resolution. This ‘care-free’ living means living one day at a time, hour by hour, letting God do as God pleases. ‘So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.”
Yet for all the attractiveness of this carefree living, this invitation to cast all our cares upon God, we clash head-on with a somewhat puzzling resistance within the very recesses of our being. To trust, to lean on God and remain steadfastly confident calls for a supremely active passivity. There is a tension in acquiescing our control, surrendering our being in charge, abandoning our directing our own affairs. All the vestiges of a deep-seated selfishness begin their resisting, refusing to give up entirely. Our consciousness can feel bombarded. We would like to persist in doing the work ourselves and get the results and enjoy them all by ourselves. And so we very often create our own prison – anxiety. Oh for the freedom and ease of those field lilies that allows the wind to blow through them. By simply being themselves, they give glory to their Creator!
Anxiety is trying to hold on to one’s cares and remain caught up in oneself, depending entirely upon oneself to handle whatever in the existing situation is anxiety-producing. The anxiety-ridden perfectionist individual persists in trying to attain what is never attained in reasoning about what cannot be understood – and Jesus keeps saying: “Do not worry, or be afraid.” If you only knew when to stop, when to go no further by your own efforts – that would be a beginning – just be content to wait, to listen, to give up useless strivings, yes, to stop putting limits on God’s love. The limit of the Unlimited is called fullness.
The carefree soul allows God to transform and integrate all the joys, hurts, disappointments, preoccupations and frustrations. The carefree soul has lost the centre in oneself. It is all the Other now, the two have become One. And this ‘Oneness’ makes a person truly free. It is a pure freedom indistinguishable from infinite freedom – it is love united with Love. This ‘Oneness’ makes a person truly joyful. Once released from the prison of self, one is joy-full, is free of care, with no longer any resistance to the will of God. One’s secret and abiding peace is being awakened to the discovery that ‘there is freedom in the will of God’ … and yes, discovering this, all of life is care-free, is simple, is joy-full. “So, my friends, to you, I say, do not be afraid, I am caring for you.”
Carrying Grace Listen ... the singing bird has returned to the land.
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