Look Up

Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 

In regards to worry, Jesus said to look up.  Why did he choose birds, and not fish or lions or worms? It must be because birds, like Jesus so pointedly mentioned, don’t sow (plant), reap  (harvest), or store away in barns (store up for future), and YET God feeds them.

In other words, we can sow, reap, and store all we want and all we can…but it’s really up to God to sustain us.   

A person who is focused solely on planting, reaping, and storing is consumed with the process.  Their vision is horizontal and down.  They work hard, they are proud of their reward, and they feel secure knowing they’ve got a stash for hard times. It’s all self-sufficiency, and that’s where the worry breeds.  When we’ve labored, we’ve received a good harvest, and we have lots left over from our hard work, we know that it can all disappear in a moment and we’ll have nothing.

But when we sow, reap, and store – knowing that God is the source of all that we have or ever will have – the worry has no place to sprout.  We finish with our chores and we soar.

Jesus ends this verse with another question, “Are you not much more valuable then they?”

God sustains us and he counts us valuable.  There’s nothing we can do to earn that – it’s just who He is and what he offers.  And that knowledge, that truth, transcends the present worry of what will be tomorrow.