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25 "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? 26 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? 27 And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? 28 And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 31 Therefore do not worry, saying, "What will we eat?' or "What will we drink?' or "What will we wear?' 32 For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 33 But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 "So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today's trouble is enough for today. (Matthew 6:25-34 NRS)
May the grace and peace of the Lord Jesus be with you, dear Friend. As you read this, it is Good Friday, a solemn day, tragic in all respects, but claimed by the Church to be a Good Friday for what Jesus did on our behalf. Never forget it was love that put Jesus on the cross, though driven there by our sins.
Are you an over-thinker? Which is a good name for people who worry too much. Yes, it's good to analyze most things and to design plans or goals to address your goals or even your daily chores; but if you do it without prayer, listening and reflection, it will lead you to a place of anxiousness and worry. Fret is a four-letter word and it means Forgetting Reliance Erases Trust. Our reliance is on the Lord Jesus but many times we place that on a second tier. Yesterday we spoke about putting God's Kingdom first which means asking God's presence and peace in our lives; fretting tends to place God behind us and not in front of us. Here we find Jesus teaching His disciples and we, His followers some Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth; DO NOT WORRY. TRUST GOD'S PROVISION.
Most commands Jesus gives feel difficult but achievable — love your neighbor, forgive others, serve the least. This one feels different. Do not worry lands on the anxious heart less like an invitation and more like an accusation. As if the person in the grip of genuine fear simply hasn't tried hard enough to stop. Gulp! Is that me He's talking about? (Put your hands down, you in the back!)
But Jesus is not scolding. He is diagnosing — and then offering a cure. The passage that follows is not a lecture on the weakness of anxious people. It is a careful, tender, almost pastoral argument designed to shift the center of gravity in a human life from fear to trust. He is not demanding that we manufacture a feeling we do not have. He is pointing us toward a reality larger than our fear, and asking us to look at it long enough for it to change us.
The word translated worry in the ancient form means to be pulled in different directions, to be divided, to have the mind fractured by competing concerns. Anxiety, in this sense, is not simply a feeling. It is a divided self — a person being pulled apart by the gap between what they need and what they can secure on their own. Jesus addresses it not with a pep talk but with a reorientation toward the Father.
Jesus does something unexpected here. He sends His listeners outside, a field trip as it were, though they were more than likely outside to begin with.
Look at the birds of the air — really look at them. They do not sow or reap or gather into barns. They have no savings account, no retirement plan, no stockpile against an uncertain winter. And yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Then He turns to the wildflowers — the lilies of the field that neither toil nor spin, dressed in a glory that outshines Solomon's finest court robes, here today and gone tomorrow. Had Jesus been in Texas He would have pointed to our bluebonnets and Indian Paintbrushes!
The argument is not that birds and flowers are carefree and therefore we should be. It is the argument of how much more. If the Father tends to the birds — creatures of negligible eternal significance — how much more does He tend to you, whom He has made in His image, for whom He gave His Son? If He clothes the grass of the field, which is here and gone, how much more will He clothe you?
Jesus is pointing us to creation as a sermon — a living, daily demonstration of the Father's provision for what He has made. Every bird that finds a worm, every wildflower that opens in the morning, is a small piece of evidence in the case against anxiety. Creation is telling us something about God, if we will stop long enough to look.
We rarely stop. Which is precisely why Jesus says look and consider — active verbs, deliberate attention. He is prescribing the practice of noticing what God is already doing as a remedy for the fear that He will stop.
"And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?"
It is almost gently comic — the image of a person hunched over their anxiety, working furiously at it as if the effort itself will produce the security they are seeking. And gaining nothing. Not an hour, not a cubit, not a single increment of the safety they are laboring toward.
Worry is the great pretender. It mimics control. It feels like doing something — like responsible, serious engagement with the real threats of life. But it produces nothing except the exhaustion of a mind running on a wheel that goes nowhere. Jesus is not telling us that the threats aren't real. He is pointing out that worry, as a response to them, is functionally useless. It does not add. It only subtracts — from our peace, from our presence, from our capacity to actually live the day we have been given.
If worry cannot add a single hour to your life, then every hour spent in worry is an hour taken from the life you actually have. The anxious person, in a very real sense, is not fully living in the present at all — they are living in an imagined future where the worst has happened and they are trying to manage it in advance.
Jesus is calling us back. Back to this day, this hour, this moment — where the Father is already present and already providing.
"But Strive First for the Kingdom"
The pivot of the passage comes in verse 33 — and it reveals what Jesus understands to be the root of anxiety. Since this was our topic yesterday, I remind us that anxiety is a symptom of a misplaced priority; when our priority should be the loving, real presence of our powerful God.
The passage closes with one of the most practical sentences in all of Scripture.
So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today's trouble is sufficient for the day.
There is almost a dry humor in this — an acknowledgment that today already has enough difficulty without borrowing tomorrow's in advance. Jesus is not promising a trouble-free future. He is not saying the hard things we fear will never arrive. He is saying: they are not here yet. And when they arrive, the Father who is providing for today will be the Father providing for that day too.
The discipline of living in the present — of refusing to let the imagination run ahead to the worst version of tomorrow and live there instead of here — is one of the most quietly radical things a follower of Jesus can practice. It is the daily, concrete application of trust. The Father has given me today. He will give me tomorrow when it comes. I do not need to carry both at once.
This is what the birds know instinctively, and what we must learn by grace: to live in the day we have been given, sustained by a Father whose provision does not run out. PRA
YER: Loving Heavenly Father, I confess that I have been carrying tomorrow before it has arrived. Forgive my anxiety and the small faith beneath it. Teach me to look at what You are already doing — in the birds, in the flowers, in the daily gifts I have stopped noticing — and to trust that the God who provides for these will not abandon me. Quiet my divided mind and bring me back to this day, where You already are. This I pray in faith, in Christ Jesus' strong name, Amen.
Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Name the worry that woke you up this morning. Write it down, hand it to God in prayer, and then — just for today — refuse to carry it. When it returns, hand it back again. Practice trusting the Father one day at a time.
I love you and I thank God for you! You matter to God and you matter to me! Bless someone with calm today!
Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.
