Greetings!

On Sunday this week, we will hear that famous passage from Matthew's Gospel about considering the lilies of the field and the birds of the air.

This passage always makes me wonder if Jesus spent much time actually considering flowers and birds. He teaches that they don't toil, yet God clothes them in raiment worthy of a King Solomon and feeds them with harvests they haven't worked for.

Excuse me, Jesus, flowers work hard for their raiment. They have to battle a balance of soil and moisture and food and sun and air and space. In the very same flower bed, I have seen like bulbs grow side by side, and one blooms out like royalty and next to it, this poor plant struggles to even measure up to the raiment of a homeless person. Right now, I have three tomato plants growing. One is nearly two feet high; one, which I planted about a month later, is about 7 inches high, and one, that I planted from the same sixpack as the first came from, is leaning over and looking sickly. I think birds or slugs are chomping the life out of it.

And the birds in my backyard - my goodness, they work all day long, eating, defending territory, building nests, flitting away from others, pecking, singing. The crows galumph around, the biggest birds in the area, but now the mocking birds have them on the wing.

But Jesus, I know, I know, isn't talking about flowers and birds. He is talking about losing ourselves completely to the mundane and losing heart in the eternal, about being stewards of the master, not the stuff.

It's a tough teaching - picking God to serve when the demands of daily living are so demanding, getting to church for a time of worship and fellowship and education on a precious weekend morning, throwing worry in the trash and thriving on trust in the abundant providence of the Divine, poking your head up and risking bearing good fruit or withering in the effort.

So, consider the lilies, consider the birds, and consider practicing your religion.

Class dismissed.

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