Daily Devotion for Tuesday 25th June 2024

Jesus said: therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Isn’t there more to life than food and more to the body than clothing?  Look at the birds in the sky: They do not sow, or reap, or gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds] them. Aren’t you more valuable than they are? And which of you by worrying can add even one hour to his life? Why do you worry about clothing? Think about how the flowers of the field grow; they do not work or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his glory was clothed like one of these! And if this is how God clothes the wild grass, which is here today and tomorrow is tossed into the fire to heat the oven, won’t he clothe you even more, you people of little faith?  So then, don’t worry saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’

Reflection 

Yesterday we thought about how we lose that sense of wonder that we had as a small child, as we grow and develop into the human-centred world and become more and more focussed on human goals. But it is still possible gradually to try and change one’s focus away from achievements, status, possessions, back to seeing the world as wonderful. And it is possible to see oneself as playing one’s own part in this wonderful creation. This is however a part that is given to you to play, not one you create for yourself: the path given to you to follow, not the path you choose. 

One of the biggest difficulties on the way to doing this is to begin to live in the present. We are so used to living in the past, remembering successes and failures, things we have done wrong or that others have done to us, concentrating on guilt, anger, or that most destructive of thoughts: “What if…?” 

Living in the future, too, is destructive of our life if we are trying to live as one who receives from God. Hopes, worries, concentration on what might happen, these all stop us living in the present moment, and stop us living the life that is given to us at that moment. 
Dag Hammarskjöld said that he didn’t know who or what asked the question, but at one point in his life he answered “Yes”. From that moment, he lived with the knowledge that life, that existence is filled with meaning and that his life therefore had a goal. From that time, he says, he knew what it was not to look back and not to worry about tomorrow 

In his own words: “Now. Since I overcame the fear – of others, of myself, of the darkness – at the edge of the unknown. Where what I know ends. But from somewhere beyond, something fills my being with the possibility it held at birth.”

Prayer

Father, help us to live in this present time 
that you give us every moment,
Help us not to lose our way in worry,
 to know that you forgive us the wrongs of the past,
You allow us to start again today.
Help us not to worry about the future,
To do what we can, what you ask of us Today,
And leave the rest in your hands. Amen