Greetings from Sweden! By the time you read this I will be back in Hutchinson, but I wanted to put down my thoughts while they were still fresh. So I write this day from a cabin looking out at the waters of the Gulf of Bothnia. There is new perspective to be gained when a person steps outside their everyday life, and from this place I’ve been thinking a fair bit about a passage from Matthew.
Perhaps it is on my mind because I am away from the everyday news cycle and have limited social media interactions. I’ve been reminded just how focused our culture is on fear and sensationalism. In order to capture our attention, we’re constantly bombarded with the most attention-grabbing, fear-raising news. It leaves us exhausted. It leaves us in a constant state of hyper-awareness. It leaves us looking around every corner for enemies. So I consider this text beyond the basics of food and clothing, thinking about other of today’s needs and anxieties.
Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by worrying can add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these (Matthew 6:25-29).
A distorted fear taught by a distorted world-view leads us down a destructive path to judgment, anger, and hatred. Someone is telling you to be afraid of many things, but it is not God. You’ve been told to fear people of differing races or the foreign born. You are being told to fear people who describe the Great Sacred Energy of Life through a different religion. Someone is telling you to fear people who express their gender differently or love differently than you. This distorted fear is not the way of God.
I looked out over a brightly colored field today and thought, “even Solomon in all his glory.� I stopped to listen and my ears were filled with three different bird songs and the gentle lapping of waves against the rock. I lifted my eyes and saw stones of every size and shape, all built together to form the shore line. God’s artistry reveals day in and day out the nature of holiness; a vibrant diverse world, each part working in harmony to create a glory that is beyond description. There is nothing to fear. Our diversity adds richness to the symphony. We need only step boldly into the great dance of life.
— The Rev. Jill Warner is pastor at New Journey UCC Church in Hutchinson.
— The Rev. Jill Warner is pastor at New Journey UCC Church in Hutchinson.
