I have to confess that I have done some unnecessary worrying over saving money for retirement. Will I have enough money to last my entire life? Will I wind up a WalMart greeter at 85 because I am broke? "Hi, welcome to WalMart!" I am a firm believer of doing all that you can with the tools we are given, prudence, patience, wisdom. But the worrying is what is the focus of today's passage. Will any amount of worry make me more money to last? And even if it did and I accrued great wealth, what good would it be if I died tomorrow crossing the street or struck down by a hidden aortic aneurysm. I had one of those, so that example is always on my mind.
What today's passage is telling me is to cooperate with God's plan. We of course have no way of knowing nor do we have the possibility of seeing clearly all that is in the mind of God. What we do have control over is how we respond to the gifts God has given us. Those gifts are none of the material goods we see each day. It is not the new Apple ear buds or i-phone XI. It is not a bigger house in a nicer place, a finer school that carries more cache, or the newest car or anything else we so often tend to strive for. It is a gross miscalculation on our part if these things we often seek are veiwed as gifts from God because we are 'worthy'. Are we more worthy than someone else? Really?? At best, they are tools to foster the kingdom of God and perhaps at worst, tools of the devil to estrange us from the present and what is truly important. Even if we do in fact use our 'gifts' to cooperate with God's plan of love, that is an imperfect and hollow gift back to God.
What is not hollow and shines brightly for all to see are the things of today's passage. That is, to be exactly the glorious creation you were made to be. To cooperate with who God created you to be is the most glorious and brilliant sign of God in the world. Just as the Lillie's or some songful bird gracing a bough outside our window, our beauty is in accepting and cooperating with who we are.
There is a unique and undefilable beauty in accepting and elevating all that God created you to be. For me, gay man, spiritual man, artist, writer, father, lover, comforter, friend - all this and more yet to be discovered about myself - is the glory of God revealed. This is the whole and holy gift we offer to creation and back to God. No things could ever amount to anything near to the gift of ourselves - to the magnificence of our creation.
All one need do is look around and see the magnificent diversity of creation to know that our wholeness and holiness is not found in a wrote set of rules or singular 'plan' for salvation. No religion can synthesize salvation to rubrics that encompass all of creation and God's individualistic plan for each and every one of us.
Rules can be tools, 'things' can be tools but the object of our salvation and purpose of being created in the first place is the totality of who we our in our uniqueness and glory.
For diversity and it's divine beauty, we gift thanks and pray this day.
Luke 12:22-31
He said to his disciples, ‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? If then you are not able to do so small a thing as that, why do you worry about the rest? Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you—you of little faith! And do not keep striving for what you are to eat and what you are to drink, and do not keep worrying. For it is the nations of the world that strive after all these things, and your Father knows that you need them. Instead, strive for his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.
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