Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you

 "Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on.  Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?  Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them.  Are you not of more value than they?  Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?   So why do you worry about clothing?  Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow:  they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.  Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?  Therefore do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?'  For after all these things the Gentiles seek.  For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.  But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.  Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things.  Sufficient for the day is its own trouble."

- Matthew 6:25-34

We are reading through the Sermon on the Mount, which began with the reading The Beatitudes, last Monday.  Yesterday, we read that Jesus taught,  "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.  For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.  The lamp of the body is the eye.  If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light.  But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.  If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!  No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other.  You cannot serve God and mammon."

 "Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on.  Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?  Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them.  Are you not of more value than they?  Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?   So why do you worry about clothing?  Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow:  they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.  Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?"  Jesus shifts the focus.  My study bible says this is a warning against anxiety, and not against thoughtful planning.  Physical well-being, it says, is directly dependent on God, and only indirectly on food, drink, and clothing.  Anxiety over earthly things, it adds, demonstrates a lack of faith in God's care.  Jesus both demonstrates the futility of worry, and also gives us poetry in the example of the lilies of the field -- effortlessly beautiful due to God's work.  His reassurance here is of God's great care.

"Therefore do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?'  For after all these things the Gentiles seek.  For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things."  Jesus is speaking about the focus in worshiping pagan idols (as did Gentiles), a consumption by dependence on earthly things.  He offers a completely different relationship; to follow your heavenly Father is to be freed from this kind of dependence and the anxiety of attachment.

"But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.  Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things.  Sufficient for the day is its own trouble."   Jesus gives us His central theme:  the kingdom of God.  God's righteousness, the currency of the Kingdom, is the subject of the Sermon on the Mount.   Christ calls us to be free from excess anxiety about earthly things.  Once again, He points us to our first concern:  the Kingdom.  It is a formula for our lives.  The focus on excess worry about the tomorrow, the future, is teaching us to give up what is unprofitable and to invest trust where it makes a difference to us.  Sufficient for the day is its own trouble is a saying worthy of remembering when we are tempted to take on too much anxiousness or efforts at control that only entangle us more deeply in a fruitless kind of toil.

There must be times when all of us feel overwhelmed by events we cannot control, but that we are somehow responsible for.  Worries about what might happen can be paralyzing, overpowering, and endless.  Jesus' call to seek the Kingdom first comes into play for many aspects of our lives, but here He makes it quite clear that worry over material goods demands that we focus on trust in God.  We know the wear and tear that excessive stress and anxiety can take upon us.  Do we often stop to think how much of that destructive stress comes over the excess worry that comes from a focus on things we can't control or change?  If we shift our focus to God, we might find a kind of reassurance that at the very least takes our anxiety levels (and hence the distress that affects health in all kinds of ways) down a notch or two.  Jesus' words here focus us on the importance of seeking first the Kingdom where excessive worry just lets in all kinds of trouble, effort that goes nowhere but to engage us in fruitless wastes of time and energy.  We are told to take a look at the birds, who don't spend their time worrying about the future, and yet are fed.   The lilies of the field arrayed in beauty are signs of God's care even for that which shines its beauty one day, and is withered the next.  Our preciousness to God is assured in today's reading.  What use does our anxiety serve?  Can we really solve problems by worrying about them?  What better thing could we be doing with that energy and focus -- and how much better would that outcome be for us?  Jesus asks, "Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?"  What else could we focus on that would make us so much richer, happier, and enlivened?  I have found that a prayerful and centered focus on God helps me to take on problems when the time is right, and particularly to break them down into a small step-by-step increment for "just this moment" that makes problems much easier to tackle than the overwhelming quality anxiety creates in magnifying problems out of all proportion.  Seek first the Kingdom is essential advice for getting our own interior house in order, and filling it with the light Christ offers.