“Therefore, I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?  So, do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ Your heavenly Father knows.  But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.  Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?”  

Matthew 6:25 – 34 (here and there.)

Jesus gets practical!   He acknowledges that life is a struggle because we cannot predict how things will be in the future.  Because of this fear of the future we do our best to make sure that we will survive – if not prosper.  We live in a constant state of “worry.”

I am writing here on Monday morning, the beginning of a new week.  I will need to make many decisions today and in the days ahead, that is for sure.  I hear a voice in my soul, is it Jesus?  He asks, “What dominates your thinking?”  Come to think of it, I feel driven to protect myself and my loved ones.  I would not say that I fear for them, but to be honest, I probably do, and I fear what might happen to them, and me.  Jesus gets my attention and says, “Don, do not worry.”  I say, under my breath, “If I do not worry for them, who will?”  So, I go on worrying.

At this point, Jesus catches my attention as he says, “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.  Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

Why do I worry?  Jesus says that it is a lack of faith.  Faith in Jesus dispels fear because we shift the responsibility from our shoulders to his.

My dear wife, Anna Ruth, one day years ago, challenged me by saying that the things she worries about do not happen, so why worry?  That struck me as the Jesus kind of spiritual common sense. It is for me.

Jesus knows how we are prone to worry.  His advice?  “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”  Matthew 6:34

The secret is to seek the right things. If I seek first and foremost the things of the Kingdom, then all falls into place and there is no real reason for fear.