January 28, 2022
I’ve got lilies and birds in my own front yard.
I didn’t put them there,
I don’t keep them there.
As they are fed and watered through the
natural course of things–
a nature put in place deliberately,
so Jesus told us,
by God’s own self,
So I do nothing to deserve their beauty,
their symbolism–
there is just delight at the cosmic joke,
of placing in proximity
this object lesson on the very thing I’ve sat down to ponder.
It’s as if the stories are true.
It’s as if the well is deeper than I know,
the storehouse bigger than I can imagine,
the table long enough for all, and set, too, for me.
Written June 11, 2021, at our home in Washington, DC. As part of a virtual day retreat on the theme of generosity, I was invited to meditate on Matthew 6, where Jesus teaches his followers not to worry, because God will provide. As I sat on the porch, the air filled with birdsong, animated conversation between the half dozen ordinary brown birds hopping back and forth along the branches of our crepe myrtle. As I watched them play, my gaze was drawn down to daylilies opening below the tree, bursting forth from bulbs I didn’t plant. Here it was before me, as the poem says, an object lesson, a cosmic joke. I jotted down a few lines to remind myself when it is hard to heard the birdsong, when the flowers have died off and there’s no visual evidence of what’s working beneath the soil. This very afternoon, as January snow fell outside my window, the silence of snowfall was briefly interrupted with the trill of the intrepid little birds, still foraging in our winter yard. I listened, and I remembered.
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”
Matthew 6:25-34
