Consider the Kingdom

I’m a little brother. This means a good portion of my childhood energy was directed toward catching up to my older brother, Reed. Folly, right? I can recall during childhood a time when Reed could see the Big Dipper, but I just couldn’t see it. He and the rest of the older kids would point toward the night sky, and say unhelpful things like, “See? It’s right there! It’s just right up there. Just look!” But, alas, I just couldn’t see it. I guess technically I could see it because my eyes could take in the whole night sky, but my perception was not yet trained in a way that I could make out the simplest and most obvious constellations. It takes the training of one’s perception or, perhaps, the maturing of one’s perception to see those constellations among other things. Admittedly, I still struggle to see the bear in Ursa Major.

We’ve been focusing upon this passage from Luke’s Gospel this summer, “consider the lilies of the field.” It’s a dynamite passage that speaks to our human tendency to live our lives anxiously. Jesus gently reminds us that it is God who guides the universe, and that God does so lovingly. Worrying is unproductive and doesn’t contribute to wellbeing. And, yet, we struggle to see it. Beloved around us pointing it out. See! It’s right there! Open your eyes!

And, so, the work before us is the training of our perception and adjusting our perspectives, just like it takes training to see those constellations. We won’t stumble into non-anxious lives in a world where the drumbeats of war sound loudly. We won’t drift into non-anxious lives in a country divided by immoderate extremes. We won’t “snap to” a non-anxious life amidst push notifications, ringing phones, pinging texts, dinging emails.

We must train our perspectives to see what’s always been there and will always be there, in spite of what we humans conjure up next to feed our need for the nervous.

And we can. We can. We can. Don’t believe me? We can. We. Can.

Church! Silence the phone and take a walk. Leave the phone is one room and sit in another. Welcome the nerves that present first and then, lovingly usher them out of your heart. If you’re not yet there, just ask God to do it for you and with you. Afraid, anxious, and unsettled are real options, but that’s no way to really live. Consider the lilies or the ravens or the elk or antelope or lupine or the lodgepole pine. Practice, practice, practice.

Love,

Jimmy