Skip to main content

Are you worried?

Worry, Jesus quite rightly identifies is toxic and ineffective – worrying does not lengthen life, indeed it may actually shorten it, it certainly limits it. But, worry we might say is endemic in contemporary society, it comes under various names like anxiety or stress, but its pervasive atmosphere in one of the wealthiest nations in the world suggests that the accumulation of wealth does not bring an end to worry.

But to tell us not to worry, surely that is the craziest of teachings. Who can live a life without worry? How does Jesus explain such a commandment?

To worry that our basic needs won’t be met, Jesus argues, is to doubt the essential blessedness and goodness of the creation. It’s not that Jesus asks us to live a life of blind faith, but to recognise that God has created a world in which even the lilies of the field are clothed in splendour. In linking his argument about trusting in God to the created world, Jesus is explicitly referring us to the role of God as Creator; as Creator God has created a world that is good (cf. Genesis) and one that is designed to supply the needs of it inhabitants.

The disciples left their livelihoods to follow Jesus and perhaps we can hear their questions in the background that have provoked Jesus’ teaching: What will we eat tomorrow Jesus, what will we drink? Jesus’ answer to them is that their needs are supplied by the Creator God who has ensured that the world is able to provide for them.

If we trust that life is blessed and good it means that we can turn our focus away from our needs towards the kingdom of God: ‘strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things shall be given to you as well’. It’s not that we think that God intervenes all over the place for his people, but that the natural world is sufficient for us (cf. Matthew 5. 45 – he causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous).

In accepting this understanding of the world – which is of course not generally accepted these days –our experience can be transformed into an experience of life as gift. Life is given to us by a benevolent Creator who wishes us to be happy and blessed. In spite of what we see of the corruption of the world, it is still blessed by God.

Trusting in God is a daily discipline; it’s so easy to fall back into fear and doubt. There are so many examples that we can use to say but life isn’t good, creation isn’t good, look at this, look at this…. But, our essential task as people who believe in a benevolent Creator God is to trust. As St Paul encourages the Romans: ‘Now hope that is seen is not hope’. We trust in a God that we do not see and we hope for a kingdom that is not yet realised and we work not for our own satisfaction but for the greater goal and prize – the kingdom of God:   ‘seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be given unto you as well’.

In an age that doubts, that questions, that worries and that fears the simple trust of the believer in goodness is a transforming and miraculous trust. It is the common vocation that we share – take trust out into your world and be a beacon of hope in the places that you inhabit.

For as Julian of Norwich saw in a vision and communicated in her writings:

‘All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well’.


Gen 1:1-2-3
Romans 8:18-25
Matthew 6:25-34

Comments

Post a Comment

Please be respectful when posting comments

Popular posts from this blog

Rugby

It has been just over three weeks now since we have arrived in Rugby and it feels like a world away from South London. If I was used to being in what is generally thought of and written about as a post-Christian secular world then Rugby looks and feels very different. There are a proliferation of churches across Rugby which are very active in working together for the good of the town. There seems to be a genuine Spirit of God's love working across Rugby in impressive ways that I'm not sure what century I am in! It is surprising to find a town that works so hard in regenerating and reinvigorating all that it is and it feels like an enormous privilege to be here.  Not that South London was any kind of spiritual desert! It was also a great privilege to work there and see how God can still be so central to people's lives in the 21st century. If the image we get from the newspapers and national media is that God is redundant in the modern age it seems that the reality is very ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Wonga and the Archbishop.

The Archbishop’s embarrassment concerning the Church Commissioner’s investment indirectly in Wonga helps to clarify ideas about sin, purity and holiness. In particular it reveals the extent to which sin is communal and interconnected. The Archbishop talks about a complex world which we all have to live in. He is right, but it can be put more theologically than that. The in-depth discussion around the Charity Commissioner’s investment portfolio and its tolerance of say up to 3% in companies (perhaps a hotel chain) that sell pornography reveals the way in which it is probably impossible to exist in perfect holy isolation. Nobody is perfect in and of themselves because we exist inter-dependently of one another. That is why sin is so corrupting - the wide effect of the pornographic industry not just on those who make it and buy it can be charted. That is why, when God made Himself known to the Jewish people as YHWH, that he started a covenantal relationship not just with a few individuals ...
Read more

Invited by God

Anyone who seeks to say that God exists and that they have something to say about God, or even for God, is walking a very fine line between insanity and megalomania: religions have fallen foul to both and still do. With that in mind, how can I stand before you as a priest, a person who is meant to be a sign of God in the world? Am I mad or a psychopath? And yet I stand here, and you are here too...... The most important thing I can say to you, is that I do, because of a sense that life is a mystery. That mystery of my existence and of yours isn’t easily located in all the other narratives that I hear and have heard through my life, about creation, purpose and meaning, or lack of it. Science and humanism offer us much, but not that.  There’s a mystery at the heart of me that’s profoundly invitational – by which I mean, it invites me to believe that my existence isn’t just a matter of flesh and blood.  And this mystery can be explored through the medium of p...
2 comments
Read more