The blemish of worry warts

       I don't know how the expression started but I am sure you have heard it. Don't be a "worry wart" , or he or she is a worry wart. Not a particularly picturesque expression. Perhaps the idea of a 'wart' is supposed to help us realize that worrying is like a little blemish and unwanted growth 'on us' that we really could, perhaps should live without. Better to cut it off.

      Today's passage notes the futility of worrying. It also reminds me again of the Our Father of which I spoke yesterday. There is still time to be present to those words. Today I might focus on "Give us this day our daily bread". 

       It is an interesting paradigm to know that everything we have is dependent on God.  God loves us and will take care of us. I wouldn't want you to think that God actually supplies a feast for you because what has God provided for the poor then?  We as humans have a warped way of looking at blessings sometimes. We make judgments about how God blesses us. Are we more blessed if we have more money than someone else? Are we more blessed because we live in a nation that consumes more than most other nations combined and squanders resources into oblivion? How are we blessed?  How we love to make judgments, quantify and label things.

       Can we just simply "be"? Can we live and love knowing that no matter what, like the Raven, we will be taken care of? Just live, love and know we are taken of. Trust in God that our daily bread in some form will be provided.

       I am reminded of the 'sending forth' that Jesus made. Instructions were set forth in Matthew 9-10:  Do not get any gold or silver or copper to take with you in your belts, no bag for the journey or extra shirt or sandals or a staff, for the worker is worth his keep. God will provide. A worker is worth his keep? Are we not loved? Will not God take care of us? If we place our trust in God and do the best we can, will we be abandoned?

      Give us this day our bread is less a question than a statement of faith and trust in God. 

      So what is it that we should worry about?  Get rid of the blemish of "worry warts", remind yourself of the faith and trust we have in God, knowing we are loved beyond measure.

       

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.