And he said to his disciples, “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds!” Luke 12:23-24
Having dropped this bombshell on “the crowd,” he turns to “the disciples.” They’re probably scratching their heads about his definition of “foolish” and “wise” and what’s worth worrying about.
It’s a matter of heart. The rich fool’s heart was in his storehouses, ours should be in the Kingdom of God. We’re living there now—if we could only see the solid walls around us, the sheltering roof over our heads, the rich robes of christ’s righteousness that we wear, the nourishment of doing God’s will (for, “I have food to eat that you know not of” Jn. 4:32)—if we could only live in that reality, our present concerns about this day-to-day reality would melt away.
Easy for you to say, Jesus—you’ve charmed the world into caring for you. Look how these women follow you around, making sure your clothes are washed and your bread baked or bought. You live off contributions, but nobody’s going to pay me to make speeches or hold seminars.
And yet . . . we have the same Father. Isn’t that his point? The Father knows what we need. He provides what we need, just as he feeds the birds and decks out the wildflowers. But not always, right? Birds occasionally starve, and wildflowers shrivel up and meet the mowing machine. Even people starve sometimes—in page ages, they starved pretty often. What’s the answer to that?
This: “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” Some translations read “delight.” It is his delight to make us heirs of riches beyond our imagination. It pleases him, like it pleased your mom and dad to put special presents under the tree on Christmas Eve—they wanted to see your face when you found those things in the morning. The difference is that we asked for those presents. We chose them and cut out pictures of them and dreamed of them and cleared space in our rooms for them.
The Father is planning to give us something we do not have the imagination or expansiveness of soul to 
ask for. It’s wrapped in plain brown paper, all but hidden among the other shiny things we think we want. People have been asking Jesus about present concerns: touch me, heal me, show me a sign, tell my brother to share. He often grants present concerns, too, for “Your Father knows you need them.” Our Father made us to need food and clothes—of course he knows. But the present day is a threshold, like childhood. Beyond it is the Kingdom in full, where our food will be the will of God and our clothing the righteousness of Christ. How does that sound? If we want that, or even if we want to want that, we are in a sense already there.
For the original post in this series, go here.
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