Sunday, September 21, 2014

9th August/September Trinity 2014,

9th August/September Trinity
Matthew 6: 25-34

“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/September Trinity
September 21, 2014
Matthew 6:25 – 34

Killing Frost
We have come to the equinox, the time of balance between the light and the darkness. From now on, here in the north, the balance will rapidly begin to shift. Temperatures cool; leaves fall; frost and winter kill set in. [In the southern hemisphere it is the opposite – the warmth, the budding life of spring.]

Today’s reading is a warning to us. At this time of the year we are not to follow nature’s course. We are not to become dark and cold. We are not to let the killing force in us, our critical side, gain the upper hand. Instead, we are to warm the analytical side of our soul with compassion and love.

We are not to let our fears of what is to come extend beyond today. The greatest fear of all is that there is nothing beyond us, that we are alone in the universe. Instead, we are warm our freezing anxieties and fears by concentrating on the wondrous harmony of the greater ecology of God’s creation, and our own place in it. For every night in sleep we visit God’s home. We receive the night’s measure, our gifts of strength and inspiration to cope with the coming day. To extend our fears anxiously into the future is to salt the fields of our own souls, to render them infertile. God’s generously pours out gifts for us, given to us day by day, night by night. As the poet says:

…An empty heart, a tormented mind,
Unkindness, jealousy and fear

Are always the testimony
You have been completely fooled!

….Come, join the honest company
Of the King's beggars -
….
Who need Divine Love every night.

Come, join the courageous
Who have no choice
But to bet their entire world
That indeed,
Indeed, God is Real.

…. Everything,
Everything in Existence
Does point to God.[1]





[1] Hafiz, "A Golden Compass."