Consider the Lilies of the Field
AM Psalm 119:97-120
Baruch 3:24-37 • James 5:13-18 • Luke 12:22-31
Eve of Ascension:
PM Psalm 68:1-20 • 2 Kings 2:1-15 • Rev. 5:1-14
Today’s passage from Luke is one of two gospel accounts (the other being Matthew 6:25-32) where Jesus’ counsel boils down essentially to this: “Don’t worry!” As the gospeler has Jesus say in verse 25, “Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life?”
To make his point, Jesus advises his audience to consider the ravens, who don’t worry about being fed. God knows the birds’ needs, just as he knows our own, and he feeds them—and us. In addition (and perhaps more famously), he tells his audience to consider the “wild flowers” (in the Matthew passage, they’re characterized as “the lilies of the field), which God dresses up in a beautiful raiment that surpasses “Solomon and all his splendor.” So, if you worry about what you will eat and what you will wear, think of other things. As verse 31 puts it, “seek (God’s) kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.”
As I ponder these two passages, I’m taken back to 1963. I was an 11-year-old kid, living in a small West Virginia town, probably among the whitest of all white burghs in the U.S. There were no African-American or Latinx residents or families. There were two families of Middle Eastern descent, and they referred to themselves as “Assyrians.” They ran the small department store on Main Street and were stalwarts of the United Methodist Church that my family attended.
In 1963, I was just beginning to kindle a pre-teen interest in the growing Civil Rights movement, and I was captivated by movie that came out that year, starring Sidney Poitier and five very strong women, the latter of whom play German nuns who have settled in the desert of Arizona and who propose to build a chapel (or a “shapel,” as they pronounce it with their German accents) there. I loved that movie. Poitier plays a traveling salesman who pauses at the nun’s camp to get water for his car’s radiator but then stays there to help them build the chapel—and to learn English and to understand something about race relations in mid-twentieth century America. The bond of trust and friendship that gradually growns in The Lilies of the Field still warms my heart.
To the nuns, the emergence of Poitier’s character represents the ultimate “don’t worry” element. They need a chapel. God will provide—and He did.
Written by David Jolliffe
...who enjoys the work he does with community meals at St. Paul’s so that homeless people need not worry (too much) about what they will have to eat.