I’ll trust in the Lord, but I’ll probably overreact first.

Matthew 6:25-26 – 25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink,[a] or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly [Parent] feeds them.”

I stumbled across this photo on social media the other day, and it felt so timely. Most days I feel like I’m at the same time overreacting to the world around me and also not doing enough, I feel like I’m feeling the pain of the world and also not caring enough about my neighbor, and I feel like I’m well informed and missing so many important things. Maybe you can relate? 

The endless streams of news that we can easily access from all our electronic devices encourage us to overreact and get worked up, so that we continue consuming the product being marketed to us. There is a lot of injustice in the world that we can be rightfully upset about, and sometimes we need to take a moment to breathe and step away. 

This passage from Matthew’s Gospel has always been a tough one, for me. I worry a lot about the future and the world around me, and yet there is trust in God who provides for us and is present in our times of need. God isn’t saying there won’t be reason to worry and God isn’t saying that everything will work out the way we hope, but through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ we can trust in the eternal promise that God will be with us until the end. 

Intern Pr. Jon