Life is More
Scripture Reading: Matthew 6:25-34
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus touches on numerous topics. His exhortation about worry is a significant portion of the sermon. That portion begins with an exhortation: Do not be anxious about your life. He then explains what he means by “your life:” what you will eat, or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?
We can see that Jesus is first of all acknowledging how we tend to look at and define “life.” A majority of our life is consumed with taking care of that which is necessary for survival. We may not think of it in those terms, especially those of us in first-world countries, but that is the baseline reality. We spend the majority of our time working to provide food, clothing, and shelter for ourselves and our families. That is not wrong in and of itself. Jesus is not telling us to sit around and do nothing and wait for provision to fall out of the sky. If you do that, you will be homeless, naked, and hungry before long.
What Jesus is warning against is the spirit that says survival is ALL life consists of. Notice again how Jesus says it: Is not life MORE THAN food, and the body MORE THAN clothing? He doesn’t say these things aren’t an essential part of life. He says life is “more than” these things. It’s not that food and clothing aren’t a part of life; it is that they are only a part of life.
The danger is that we will become so focused on those things we will lose sight of the more important things in life. As a result, we will have our priorities turned upside down. We will seek first “all these things” and the kingdom of God will be either an afterthought or forgotten altogether.
