9th August Trinity
Matthew
6: 19-34
“Do not save up your
treasures on the earth, where moths and rust eat away at them and thieves
tunnel in and steal. Save up your treasures in heaven, where no moth and no
rust consumes and thieves do not tunnel in and steal. Because where your
treasure is, there will your heart be also.
“The lamp of the body is the
eye. So if your eye is wholesome, your whole body is lighted; whereas if your
eye is bad, your whole body is in darkness. So if the light inside you is
dark…what great darkness!
“No one can serve two masters: either he will hate
one and love the other, or he will put
up with one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and greed’s
demon of riches [mammon].
“That is why I tell you, do
not trouble your heart about what you will eat and drink or with what you will
clothe your body. Is not life more important than food, and the body more
important than clothing? Look at the birds in the sky: they do not plant, do
not harvest, and do not fill barns, and your heavenly Father still feeds them.
Are you not of more value than they? Can any of you, by being vastly concerned,
add one moment to the span of your life?
And why do you worry about
clothing? Study how the lilies of the field grow: they do not work, and they do
not spin cloth. But I am telling you that not even Solomon in all his glory was
ever arrayed as one of these. If that is how God clothes the wild grass of the
field, here today and thrown into the furnace tomorrow, will He not do much
more for you, o small in faith?
“So do not worry, saying, ‘What will we drink? What
will we wear?’ It is the nations who ask for all these things, and indeed, your
heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. Ask first for God’s
kingdom and its harmonious order, and these other things will be delivered to
you as well.
So do not worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow
can worry about itself. Today’s trouble is enough for today.
9th August
Trinity
 |
| St George and the Dragon, Arild Rosenkrantz |
September 16, 2012
Matthew 6: 19-34
Here in the North, the days are noticeably shorter. And with
the growing darkness there arises a subtle measure of anxiety. Will I get
everything done? Am I sufficiently prepared for what is coming? Will there be
enough?
Fear and anxiety are part of the equipment that comes with
being in a body. They help ensure our bodily survival. But when anxiety begins
to grow and to infect our souls and gnaw at our spirits, it endangers our true
life. We need to counter its working by remembering to trust in the growing
kingdom of God within our hearts, by recalling God’s harmonious order, by
trusting in His beneficence. God knows what we truly need. If we align
ourselves with His higher purposes, then what we truly need comes to us. And
the body survives as well.
Adam Bittleston gave us a prayer against fear. It helps us
align ourselves with what God wants to send to us. It can be an antidote to our
rising anxieties:
May the events that seek me
Come unto me;
May I receive them
With a quiet mind
Through the Father’s ground of
peace
On which we walk.
May the people who seek me
Come unto me;
May I receive them
With an understanding heart
Through the Christ’s stream of love
In which we live.
May the spirits which seek me
Come unto me;
May I receive them
With a clear soul
Through the healing Spirit’s Light
