Consider the Daffodils

"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?" Matthew 6:25

All of the sudden, with no effort from me, the world around me is blossoming in color and life. What was just a few weeks ago, dark hard soil, has now erupted with green and yellows and the promises of more hues that I can imagine. Whether it is raining or the sun is shining, life is breaking forth everywhere. In fact, life is absorbing the rain and the light as well as the darkness and using it for food and strength.

Over the past months, I have been worrying a great deal about my life, my future and where God is calling me. I want to be useful, I want the gifts that God has given me to be offered to the greater good of others. And I want to be able to provide for my family. The possibility of not being able to provide for them scares me. And I worry. My experience is that when someone says, "Don't worry!", I think to myself, they have no idea! I want to have the kind of faith that is able to trust God for everything, all the time, night and day, in plenty and in want. And yet, I am completely human, and times of transition and change trigger my automatic worry reflect. It is then easy to think I am not faithful enough, and add that lack of faith to a growing list of my human shortcomings.

Today, I would like to believe that Jesus didn't preach this sermon to chastise anyone, including me. But as a constant reminder, when we do get fearful and full of worry, that God is acting in our favor, God is working constantly for our care and restoration. The focus of this teaching is not about us, but about God. A God, who like a loving parent, is constantly feeding, clothing, providing for us. I may be a person of little faith on the hardest days, but God is never failing, even when my capacity to fall short is overwhelming me. We are not asked to be God, instead Christ asks us to let God be God.

So just for today I am going to let God be God and rejoice in the things I have no control over. The daffodils and forsythia, the rain and the sun. And I will do what I can do, offer what I can offer, be who God made me be, and trust God in all things. Just for today, I will let off worrying and let God.