I’LL ADMIT IT: I can sometimes be a worrier. Even as I write these words, I have this nagging anxiety that I’ve overcommitted myself to too many things, too many ministry opportunities. And because of this, I wrestle with opposing feelings. On the one hand, part of me wonders how I’m going to get everything done, done well, and on schedule.

But on the other hand, I know from experience that somehow it almost always gets done. No one else sees how I sometimes wake up at night and then can’t get back to sleep because I can’t stop thinking about the things on my to-do list. All they see is the end product, not the anxious process of getting there.

Let me be quick to say that I’m not talking about the all-too-common kind of crippling anxiety that gets in the way of living a relatively normal life. Nor am I talking about the endless stress of living in poverty. Rather, some might call me a member of the “worried well,” the people who have comparatively nothing to complain about but complain anyway.

Right? You know who you are.

Again, overall, I don’t think Jesus was preaching the Sermon on the Mount to the worried well. Many if not most of his listeners were probably relatively poor. But even privileged people like myself can worry, and Jesus has something to teach all of us.

IN THE SERMON, Jesus tells his hearers not to worry about food and clothing, trying to point them beyond the necessities of earthly life to the bigger picture of the gracious providence of God over all creation. Looking up into the sky, he says:

Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? (Matt 6:26-27, NIV)

“Look at the birds,” he says. The verb Matthew uses suggests more than just a casual glance. Study the birds, Jesus seems to say. Learn from them. Don’t they seem to live a carefree life? Unlike you, they don’t have to plant or harvest. They don’t have to worry about whether the crop will come in. But somehow they still eat. Doesn’t that tell you something?

In a similar vein, Jesus then gestures to the flowers blooming on the hills and asks:

And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? (vss. 28-30)

“See how the flowers of the field grow,” Jesus says. The verb translated as “see” is different than the earlier one for “look,” but the intent is the same: it means to look at something carefully to learn from it.

And what’s the lesson to be learned? None of the people listening to the sermon and worrying about clothing, I presume, ever dreamed of having a wardrobe like Solomon’s. How could they ever hope to achieve that? But all around them were blooms more beautiful than Solomon’s finest outfits. How?

By the providence of God.

With both metaphors, Jesus is arguing from the lesser to the greater. Birds are small creatures, and in a sense, they’re of less value than humans, who are created in God’s image. Grass is short-lived and so are its flowers; it quickly dries up and becomes nothing more than a common fuel for ovens. But in the world created by a gracious and attentive Father, birds eat, grass is beautiful — and neither worry.

Worry is useless, Jesus insists: “Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” The word translated as “hour” here typically means “cubit,” a measurement of length, not time. Moreover, the word “life” can refer either to one’s age or one’s stature. So is Jesus talking about adding an hour to our lifespan or a cubit to our height?

Either, but it hardly matters. The point is that no matter how much we do it, worry won’t make us live longer or grow taller. Worry accomplishes nothing. That’s the irony: we worry about things that need to happen, that need to get done — but worry itself does nothing except make us suffer.

Jesus isn’t saying, of course, that we don’t need to sow, or reap, or spin thread. He’s not saying that the birds just sit around waiting for God to drop food into their nests. They have their own work to do, but they don’t worry about it. They eat because they’re doing what God created them to do, in a world he created with meticulous care.

That raises a question: are we doing what we were created to do? And if not, might that be the source of our anxiety?

Just a thought.

JESUS SEEMS TO chide people who worry, calling them people of “little faith.” In the Greek, it’s actually one compound word that could function like a nickname. Think of all the things we might call someone to say that they were of “little intelligence,” and you get the idea.

But I don’t think Jesus is insulting people. Rather, he’s pushing them to truly and personally believe in the trustworthy providence of God the Father. We’ll explore how he uses the word in the next post.