March 25

“Today’s trouble is enough for today!”

Scripture:   Matthew 6:25-34

 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 important than food, and the body more important 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 Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?

 28 “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies 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, O 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.

Reader: This is the word of the Lord.   Response: Thanks be to God.

Some thoughts:
Jesus was perfectly aware of God’s timing. So often in the early parts of the Gospels, he said, “My time has not yet come.” Then as he approached his last Passover, (he had regularly observed them throughout his lifetime), the Gospels say, he set his face toward Jerusalem. Jesus remained focused on what was right before him. As Passover approached, he told the disciples “the Son of Man will be handed over to be crucified.” He never panicked, not even when he washed the feet of Judas, the one who would betray him only minutes later. He was composed in the present because he was connected intimately to the will of his Father and their overall plan for restoring the whole created order. He was realistic as he dealt with “the day’s troubles.” It was not a “God will work everything out” or a “whatever happens, happens” mindset. In the Garden of Gethsemane, he earnestly prayed hoping there might be another way. The silence from the Father in regards to Jesus’ request for an alternative course, is another way of affirming Jesus’ earlier words to his disciples in the Upper Room where he told Thomas, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father but by me.” There is no other way, period. One of the reasons I love and trust the Bible so much is that the Holy Spirit pulled no punches guiding the writers as they wrote. Nothing is sugar-coated! We see the transparent humanity of Jesus. He is no distant God with an unreal connection to human beings. He is like us in every respect. What is one thing we can take from this passage? In this Lenten season, rather than being overwhelmed by all the things in our lives that need attention, deal with one thing at a time as we walk with the Savior through these days leading to the cross. Deal with one thing today.

Music: “Day by Day”   Jessica Wu

www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpOvYdFjbR0

Prayer:  Who can tell what a day may bring forth? Cause me therefore, gracious God, to live every day as if it were to be my last, for I know not but that it may be such. Cause me to live now as I shall wish I had done when I come to die. O grant that I may not die with any guilt on my conscience, or any known sin unrepented of, but that I may be found in Christ, who is my only Savior and Redeemer.
–Thomas á Kempis, 1380-1471