9th August Trinity
Matthew 6; 19-23, 24-34
“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 you have gathered a treasure, there your heart will bear you.
“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!
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| Worship of Mammon, E. De Morgan |
“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
Sep 16, 2018
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:
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| Pentecost, Mark Wiggin |
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
By which we see.*
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