“Consider the Birds”

Matthew 6:25

            Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus.

            Worry can be paralyzing.  Just think of the woman who couldn’t sleep at night because she was always afraid someone would break into her house.  Then, one night, she heard a noise in the house, so she sent her husband downstairs to investigate.

            Sure enough, he found a burglar.  The husband said, “Come upstairs and meet my wife.  She’s been waiting to meet you for ten years.”

            A group of Florida senior citizens were talking about their ailments.  One said, “My arms are so weak, I can hardly hold this cup of coffee.”  “I know,” said another.  “My cataracts are so bad, I can’t even see my coffee.”  Another said, “I can’t turn my head because of the arthritis in my neck.  And my blood pressure pills are making me dizzy.”  Together they agreed, “I guess that’s the price we pay for getting old.”

            Finally, one added, “On the bright side, look at it this way.  We should be thankful we can still drive.”

            In the book of Matthew chapter 6, Jesus had something to say about worry.  “Therefore I tell you,” He said, “do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear.  Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?”  And He said, “Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?”

            As much as we might hate to admit it, worry consumes us.  It’s been said that half of all those in America’s hospital beds are constant worriers and between 75 and 90% of all visits to primary-care physicians are stress-related complaints or disorders.  Even worse, worry has been linked to the leading causes of death including heart disease, lung disease, accidents, cirrhosis, and suicide.  On any given workday, one million workers are absent due to stress-related complaints.  And add to that the list the mental fatigue because of nights without sleep and days without peace, and we get a glimpse of the havoc worry plays in destroying our quality and quantity of life.

            How do you know if you’re suffering from “worry”?  The symptoms include the inability to relax, tension headaches, sleeplessness, tightness in your chest, irritability, and the inability to concentrate.  Sound familiar?

            What are some of the things about which we worry?  Believe it or not, many worry about clothes.  Because the clothing industry demands it, literally billions of dollars are spent on importing and exporting cotton, wool, and other man-made goods just so some can be “in fashion” and have the latest style of clothes.

            Materialism is another dominant worry.  We think the more we have, the better off we’ll be.  But, it seems, the very opposite is true.  Instead, no matter how much we have, we can never have enough.

            Not too many years ago, you were considered fortunate to have air conditioning and a color TV.  Today, if you don’t have a cell phone, internet, and a satellite TV, you’re behind the times.  You might say, “I don’t love money.”  Sure you don’t.  But how long can you live without it?  How long before greed begins to eat away at you?  Does affluence make life simpler?  Not at all.  Instead, it often makes things worse.

            As Jesus said, “It’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

            It’s been said that most Christians are practical atheists.  We profess to believe in God, but we turn to everything else before God.

            Think of the two men who were discussing the financial situation of their church when one said to the other, “We better pray about this.”  The other replied, “Do you think it’s come to that?”

            It shouldn’t “come to that”--it should begin with that.  As Jesus said in the words of Matthew chapter 6:  “Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”

            In the tenth chapter of Luke’s gospel, we find one of the most amusing stories in all the Bible.  Jesus had just stopped in to visit three of His closest friends—Mary, Martha, and Lazarus.  He had fed the five thousand, He raised a little girl from the dead, and, on the mount of Transfiguration, His face shone like the sun and His clothes became a dazzling white.

            Then attended by His twelve disciples, Jesus went to a little town just outside of Jerusalem, a little town called Bethany, the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus.  They were good friends, and He often went to visit them to get away from the crowds, to relax, and to rest.

            And as all thirteen men stood outside their door, Martha, apparently the eldest of the three, welcomed them into her home.

            And as any good hostess might do, she made a beeline for the kitchen to put together a little something to eat—some olives, some figs, some bread, maybe a little wine.  Her guests were, after all, Jesus and His twelve disciples.  What would you do if such a group would step foot into your home?

            The only problem was Martha was working in the kitchen by herself.  Now you can understand Lazarus chumming around with Jesus and the disciples.  You get a bunch of men together and they have lots to talk about.  But Mary, a lone woman, sitting in the same room with fourteen men, while Martha banged around in the kitchen, now that’s just plain wrong.  I don’t want to come across as some male chauvinist, but as far as Martha was concerned, Mary’s place was not sitting on the floor, it was working in the kitchen.

            And how Martha made that perfectly clear.  She came up beside Him and respectfully said, “Lord, don’t You care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself?  Tell her to help me!”  In other words, “I’m trying to put a nice dinner together for you all, and the least she can do is to get up off the floor, step into the kitchen, lift a little finger, and help me.  I can’t do all this by myself!”

            Now any of us would expect Jesus to say, “You know, Martha, you’re right.  There’s no way we can expect you to do this all by yourself.  It’s just too much.  So let me tell you what.  We’ll shoo Mary in there in just a minute.  That is, after all, where she belongs.”

            But that’s not what He said.  Instead, He said, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed.  Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

            Those words can just easily be spoken to us.  “You are worried and upset about many things.”  If truth be known, yes we are. 

“But only one thing is needed,” Jesus said.  What is that one thing?  It’s Jesus.  He’s the One who, by His all-atoning sacrifice, by His blood-bought gift of redemption, has redeemed us from our life of sin and brought us into an everlasting relationship with Him.  And with Jesus, there is no more need.

In the pages of the Old Testament, the prophet Habakkuk said this:  “Though the fig tree should not blossom, and there be no fruit on the vines, though the yield of the olive should fail, and the fields produce no food, though the flock should be cut off from the fold, and there be no cattle in the stalls, yet I will exult in the Lord, I will rejoice in the God of my salvation.  The Lord God is my strength, and He has made my feet like hinds’ feet, and makes me walk in high places.”

One more thing—it’s a story about a man named Shohoiya Yokowai who spent twenty-eight years in prison.  It wasn’t a prison of bars and locks and prison guards; it was a self-imposed prison of fear.

He was a Japanese soldier on the island of Guam in World War II.  And when the American forces landed, he fled into the jungle and found a cave in which he hid for twenty-eight years because he didn’t want to be captured by the Americans.  And when he read one of the thousands of pamphlets that were dropped into the jungle saying the war was over, he was still afraid.  For twenty-eight years he lived in a cave, coming out only at night to look for cockroaches, rats, frogs, and mangoes on which he somehow managed to survive.  Finally, some natives found him and convinced him it was safe to leave his jungle prison.

“What a waste!” we think.  “How could a man live that long in such an absurd prison of fear?”  But isn’t that exactly what we do?  Day after day and year after year, we too are bound in prisons of fear.

How can we escape?  There’s only one way and that’s Jesus.  By the power of His cross and His rich, undeserved grace, we are set free to live, to love, and to serve.  Gone is the darkness.  Gone are the chains.  Gone are the reasons to be afraid.

All thanks be to God!

            Lord God, heavenly Father, we often struggle with petty problems and the many cares and worries of this life.  Free us from our anxieties and lift us up from the depths of our despair that we may know that all things work together for our good, for we love You.  We pray in Jesus’ name.  Amen