Seek First the Kingdom

(Note. I have no explanation why yesterday's slice of bread appeared at 10: 34 pm. I composed it at the usual time...)

 Mt 6: 24-34

²⁴ “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.

Do Not Worry

²⁵ “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 than food, and the body more than clothes? ²⁶ 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? ²⁷ Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

²⁸ “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. ²⁹ Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. ³⁰ If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? ³¹ So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ ³² For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. ³³ But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. ³⁴ Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

After pointing out the uselessness of worrying, Jesus gives us a simple formula to follow:  "Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.: (Mt 6: 33). So often we become victims of our own imagination, the "what if's?" , the conversations that play over and over again in our minds, and the always :worst scenarios.  When the time actually comes for what we've been dreading, the reality is nothing like we imagined.  But we never seem to learn that and find ourselves worrying needlessly when the next situation arises. If we keep our attention focused on Jesus, and the work of building up his kingdom and living out the values and standards he has laid out for us; and if we look around us and see the beauty with which he has surrounded us, we can more easily ask, "Why worry?" 

Bro. Rene