“Don’t worry”

Read: Matthew 6:25-27

Reflect: Today’s passage may feel radical at first, utterly against simple common sense. That must have been even more of a challenge for Jesus’ first hearers. “Jesus’ audience would have been ordinary peasant people who had to worry about their next meal all the time, yet Jesus tells them not to worry about anything. He asks them instead to view the world with new eyes, in order to see all around them evidence of God’s care and provision.”1

• Worry generally focuses our energy and attention either on the past (‘I wish…”) or on the future (“What if…”). Jesus called us into the present, the only “time” we can directly affect and use to meet with God. Practice pausing your worries and concerns, and sensing God’s presence with you. Keep doing this (whether you call it “meditating,” “going to your ‘happy place’” or some other name you choose) until you are able to ‘be’ with God anytime, day or night—in the present moment.

• Jesus also made the practical point that worry seldom does any good (verse 27). Can you think of things you spent a lot of time and energy worrying about that never happened? How does worry differ from wise foresight or precautions? What are some more effective, sustainable approaches to life’s challenges than worry?

Pray: Lord Jesus, you modeled a life of peace and trust. Help me to keep learning how to live a life in which my energy can focus on your purposes rather than my fears. Amen.

​1 Eugene Eung-Chun Park and Joel B. Green, study note on Matthew 6:25-34 in The CEB Study Bible. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2013, p. 17 NT.