"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 important than food, and the body more important 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?"-Matthew 6:25-26, NIV
A businessman flew his company's plane from the Deep South to a northern university to attend a class for a week. There, he sat next to an engineer. The businessman kept leaving the class in panic to talk on his phone. During a morning break he shared with the engineer how he had lost thousands of dollars in the stock market just that morning. He had been leaving class to talk with his broker. The businessman could hardly concentrate in class the rest of the day, wondering how he would fare in the end.
His experience underscores how fragile our economy is. Thousands work with the threat of layoff or plant shutdown hanging over their head. The nation hangs on the every word of Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. The wrong words from his mouth can give the nation's economy the jitters.
Christians should not worry about any of the cares of this life. God will faithfully provide for every one of them. A case in point is the birds in the air. God daily provides for the millions of them. We may look at the way they move about and find food here and there as happenstance. This is far from the truth. What we are seeing is the faithfulness of God at work. Now if He will actively work to feed the multitude of those relatively insignificant creatures, how much more will He do for us whom He made in His image?
That Jesus used the birds to illustrate God's faithfulness to provide for us might appear to be oversimplifying things. In reality His child like faith in God is the only means by which we can live a life not characterized by worry.
Dear Lord, thank You for Your willingness and Your ability to faithfully provide for all who accept You as their heavenly Father. May my faith in You grow to become simple. Amen.
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