Matthew 6:25, “Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?”
The ad says, “Eat all you want and lose weight.” We should be ashamed that we are so willing to lay aside common sense (not to mention unchangeable laws of physics) to embrace a lie conceived in avarice, propagated by greed and believed only by the selfish and foolish. Why do we do this? In an interview with a confidence man convicted of bilking older people out of their fortunes by wild investment promises, he was asked how he could convince his victims of such ridiculous schemes. He stated, “We all believe in what we want to be true.” It could be added that if the plan involves indulgences, count us in; if it involves abstinence, count us out.
We are willing to do anything that adds to us, whether to our bank account, our indulgent lifestyle, or our circle of friends. We are awash in advice and counsel on how to live longer and have more and we take it into our heads, our homes, our Meetings, and our hearts. We have become obsessed with the prospect of having all we want to eat and still looking thin.
We are fascinated with schemes of being paid more and more for less and less work. We are sold toys and gadgets making impossible promises of less work and more enjoyment.
Because of this philosophy, the average American is manacled to credit card debt. The mail, delivers monthly the tenacious reminders of reality left over from the accumulation of things he was convinced he wanted and needed (or the things he convinced himself) that he “could not live” without. The fact that our spiritual subsistence and our physical proliferation are at opposite ends of the scale of our care, our attention, and importance, seems to elude our thinking. We know it; we just can’t seem to remember it when we see something we want. We need to reassess our condition and consider the question Jesus asked here, “Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?”
Granted, some of our sloth in these areas is due to weakness but some is due to plain inattentiveness. You would likely be surprised at the difference in the portion of your fortune that is given toward the advancement of the Kingdom of God and what portion is allotted to restaurants. What is the difference in time devoted to preparing the soul and mind by meditation, worship, and prayer, and the time devoted to dressing, preparing, and feeding the body? An evening with a calculator and your credit card statements can be very enlightening. (These figures more than surprised me— I was ashamed.) We simply have not paid attention. Where a man’s treasure is (or is spent) there is where you will find his heart. This is elementary, but a lesson from which many seem to have never graduated. “Is not the life more than food, and the body than clothes?”
Aahhh… This Is The Life!
It is interesting to note that Jesus asks, “Is not THE life… more than food…etc. I like the way He asks us about the life. Not life – but the life. In our vernacular we use this same term when things are as we think they should be. When all is in place, and life is working well, when we are comfortable and happy, we sigh and look to our companion and say, “This is the life!” Contrarily, when things are not so great, when our toys and machines break down, when we hear our neighbor or our companion complain about the way things are, we answer with futility and say, “Well, that’s life!”
Somehow, there is a message in the...
