Some days I wake with a weight on my chest before I’ve even opened my eyes, as though the worries of tomorrow have crept into the room during the night and perched themselves on my ribs. Recently my life has been a little upside down. I’m finding things difficult. It’s a very modern feeling, but Jesus knew it well enough to speak against it. ‘Consider the lilies…’ He said. As if the great spiritual revolution of the world could be built on a flower.
But the longer I live, the more I think He was right. Not because flowers are clever — they’re utterly brainless — but because they trust the soil they’re planted in. They don’t bargain with God. They don’t negotiate with fate. They simply live, and leave the rest to the One who clothes them.
If I’m honest, most of my own anxiety comes from trying to live three days at once. I’m worrying about Monday while still trapped in Thursday, and somehow grieving a Wednesday that hasn’t even happened yet. Jesus cuts right through this nonsense: ‘Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will worry about itself.’ Which is another way of saying that God doesn’t give us the grace for imaginary catastrophes, only for the real ones — and never more than a day at a time.
We forget that trust isn’t a spiritual feeling; it’s a discipline. The birds still build their nests. They still hunt and flap and feed their young. God doesn’t drop worms from Heaven like celestial room service. But the birds don’t panic about next winter. They go about their small appointed duties, and leave the climate of tomorrow to the Creator of the seasons.
That, I think, is the art we’ve lost. Most of us live as though the whole universe will collapse if we stop worrying for ten minutes. As though God Himself is pacing the floor saying, ‘If only Robert would stay awake a bit longer fretting, I could finally sort out his life.’ It is, frankly, a ridiculous theology, but many of us believe it without ever saying it aloud.
The lilies offer a quieter wisdom. They grow by a kind of holy instinct. They unfold where they are planted. They neither toil nor spin nor engage in the frenetic performance of modern life. They don’t ask, ‘What if?’ fifty times a day. They exist in the sacred present — and somehow that’s enough for God to array them in glory.
To live like that isn’t to be passive. It’s to recognise that you’ve a daily portion of work, and a daily portion of grace, and both are sufficient for today. When the mind begins its tirade — What if this fails? What if they leave? What if the future breaks? — you learn to interrupt it with the same calm authority Jesus used on the storm: ‘Peace. Be still.’
I’ve learned to say, sometimes out loud:
‘This isn’t mine to carry. This is God’s part.’
Then I return to the duties that are mine — the small, honest tasks of the day — and I leave the unsolvable mysteries to Someone who’s neither intimidated nor confused by them.
And slowly, almost imperceptibly, the soul begins to quieten. You find that you can breathe again. You discover that you’re not, in fact, abandoned. That the God who feeds the sparrows hasn’t forgotten your name or your needs.
Living like the birds and the lilies simply means this:
I will live the day I’ve been given, with the grace I’ve been granted, under the care of a God who isn’t fickle.
Everything else — tomorrow, the shadows, the imagined disasters — can take their turn.
For now, I’ll stand in the sunlight, thin as it may be, and let God clothe me one hour at a time. Well, I’ll try at least.
Wording 