“Look at the birds. They don’t plant or harvest or store food in barns, for your heavenly Father feeds them. And aren’t you far more valuable to Him than they are? Can all your worries add a single moment to your life?” – Matthew 6:26-27
During His time on earth, Jesus loved to use visual aids to communicate His message. This is one of the things that made Jesus such a great teacher. In Matthew 6, Jesus pointed to the birds flying in the sky and reminded His disciples how God feeds them and takes care of them.
Matthew 6:26 says, “Look at the birds. They don’t plant or harvest or store food in barns, for your heavenly Father feeds them. And aren’t you far more valuable to Him than they are?”
Here, Jesus is telling them that even the birds who are far less valuable than human beings get taken care of. They don’t prepare the food, they don’t plan for it, and yet Jesus takes care of them. He says this because here we are, worrying about things after we have already planned 999 ways we are going to avoid what it is we are worried about.
Yet these birds give no thought to what they will eat, and Jesus just provides. Should we not be more like the birds in the sky? This does not mean that we never make any plans. But it does mean that we trust our Creator to take care of all our needs. Jesus asks the question, “Aren’t you far more valuable to Him than they are?”
The answer is clearly, yes, we are more valuable than the birds in the sky. Yet, so many of us are still so quick to worry. We worry if we are going to get the job. We worry if the offer we put on the house will get accepted. We worry if someone likes us. We worry if we are going to have the money to pay the bills.
Jesus asks another question in Matthew 6:27, “Can all your worries add a single moment to your life?” So, what do you have to gain from worrying? If He can take care of the birds in the sky, why wouldn’t He take care of your needs? It is time to stop worrying and start trusting a God who loves you infinitely more than you could ever imagine!