Don't Worry

uring the Holocaust, Corrie ten Boom and her family helped many Jewish people escape the Nazis. We can only imagine the anxiety she experienced. Later she wrote, “Worrying is carrying tomorrow’s load with today’s strength—carrying two days at once. It is moving into tomorrow ahead of time. Worrying doesn’t empty tomorrow of its sorrow. It empties today of its strength.”

In Matthew 6, Jesus instructed His followers: “Do not worry about your life.” He listed common human concerns: food, water, clothing. The people, gathered to hear His teaching, were well-acquainted with work and worry. Their days were consumed by meeting their basic physical needs.

Jesus gave two examples of God’s great care. The first was the “birds of the air” (v. 26). Jesus explained that birds do not work as humans do— sowing, reaping, storing away grain. Instead, they do what God created them to do: find food and build nests. Yet God provides for them. Jesus followed up with a rhetorical question: “Are you not much more valuable than they?” The implied answer, of course, is yes. God provides food for His children as well.

Jesus then pointed to the “flowers of the field” (v. 28). They do not work at all, yet they are extravagantly beautiful, even more beautiful than Solomon, the most excessively adorned king. These flowers decorate the ephemeral dried grass, which is burned up for fuel (v. 30). Jesus told His followers that God will dress them with even greater care.

Jesus urges us to “seek first his kingdom and his righteousness” (v. 33). The word seek here does not mean “search for” but rather “pursue.” When we love God with our whole being, He promises to provide, and we need not worry.