Farming Faithfulness

...by letting go of anxiety and control.

When you really think about it, this might be the most difficult part of the Sermon on the Mount to adhere to.

Don’t call someone an idiot? Okay, yeah - I can avoid that.
Give my charitable donations quietly without telling everyone? I mean, it goes against cultural practice, but okay, that makes sense to me.
Love my enemies? Hmm…might be tough, but I think I can do it.

Don’t worry about my life? …gather food? …buy clothing? …save for retirement?

That’s silly talk. I must do those things.

And yet, Jesus says: Do not worry.

It’s not a flippant statement. Jesus isn’t saying “Don’t plan.” He’s not calling for carelessness or laziness. He’s calling out the anxious preoccupation we often live with—how we let worry about the future steal our peace, our purpose, and our trust.

Jesus points to birds and flowers—not because they’re carefree, but because they live in tune with their created design. They do what they’re made to do. And they are sustained.

That’s the invitation here. Not to stop caring, but to stop scrambling. To seek God’s kingdom first. And trust that in doing so, we’ll be held.

Matthew 6:25-34

“Therefore, I say to you, don’t worry about your life, what you’ll eat or what you’ll drink, or about your body, what you’ll wear. Isn’t life more than food and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds in the sky. They don’t sow seed or harvest grain or gather crops into barns. Yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t you worth much more than they are? Who among you by worrying can add a single moment to your life? And why do you worry about clothes? Notice how the lilies in the field grow. They don’t wear themselves out with work, and they don’t spin cloth. But I say to you that even Solomon in all of his splendor wasn’t dressed like one of these. If God dresses grass in the field so beautifully, even though it’s alive today and tomorrow it’s thrown into the furnace, won’t God do much more for you, you people of weak faith? Therefore, don’t worry and say, ‘What are we going to eat?’ or ‘What are we going to drink?’ or ‘What are we going to wear?’ Gentiles long for all these things. Your heavenly Father knows that you need them. Instead, desire first and foremost God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore, stop worrying about tomorrow, because tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Psalm 37:3-7

Trust the Lord and do good; live in the land, and farm faithfulness. Enjoy the Lord, and he will give what your heart asks. Commit your way to the Lord! Trust him! He will act and will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, your justice like high noon. Be still before the Lord, and wait for him. Don’t get upset when someone gets ahead—someone who invents evil schemes.

Prayer

God,

I live in a culture that goes to great lengths to preserve and protect, to plan and to prevent. Frankly, I don’t feel it’s all wrong. I think. I don’t know. But I do know I want to rely more on you—on your provision—than on any sense of my own ability to secure all I need.

Honestly and actually…it’s not me I worry about. I could probably live rather comfortably in a minivan all on my own. But the loved ones you’ve entrusted to me…I do worry about them.

Like you do for me, right?

So help me, God: give me a deeper trust in your care for all people, including “my own.” Smack me upside the heart if I forget that they are yours before they are mine. (As if I could love them more than you do.)

In short: help me to trust in your provision.

By your Spirit & in Christ,
Amen.