There was plenty to be anxious about this week from the missing of the closing date of a multi-million project to the finalising of the many details of a very important church wedding! Perhaps it would be appropriate to listen to what Jesus had to say on the subject!
The basic instruction is “Do not be anxious”. It comes in the Sermon on the Mount and St Matthew records it in Chapter 6 verses 25 to 34. The enabling idea is that God knows your needs and if you put what He considers important first in your life, He will look after what you need (verse 33).
Jesus had been saying in his sermon that if we make the right choices there is no need to be anxious and uses birds and lilies to illustrate this fact. The birds find some of their food on our bird table. Life is not a picnic for them as a cock Robin considers it his territory and drives other birds away. He has his family to feed but so have the various Tits and Finches as well as the Flycatcher and Dunnock.
This morning to underline his dominance he took a bath in the birds drinking water! However despite the difficulties he creates there is no trace of anxiety or despair in the flock but simply a persistence which pays off in due course with a share of the seed.
Lilies are centre stage in the wedding pedestals. Indeed Solomon could not compete with their splendour. They neither toil nor spin nor did they evolve but God clothed the fields with beauty as a gift to us reflecting his own nature. Perhaps this is what St Peter had in mind when he listed some of God’s gifts and referred to them as the multi-coloured grace of God (1 Peter 4 verse 10).
Weddings can be a testing time with anxieties creeping in; “what shall we eat? or what shall we drink? or what shall we wear?” (Verse 31) What matters in the end of the day is whether we have fed on the Lamb and are clothed with the robe of His righteousness (Verse 33).
Jesus puts the whole anxiety thing into perspective and holds the mirror of his word up to us so that we might see who we are living for – God or self? If the latter it need not be so – trust the One who feeds the birds!