“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 arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?” Matthew 6:28b-30
How
many times I have heard these words. How many times I have gone to them for
encouragement. How many times I have desperately desired them to bring comfort,
yet been unable to find it.
Times
like right now. For what feels like months, I’ve been saying, “Come on, Ellen.
You believe this to be true. Why can’t you just shake that doubt?”
That
inevitable leads me back to asking a one-word question that holds all my
doubt: Why?
Why me? Why here? Why now? Why this? Why them? Why?
I like
knowing why. We all like knowing why.
Matthew 6
ripped me apart on Monday afternoon, just two days ago.
“Consider
the lilies…”
They
don’t work or panic.
They
don’t worry about what’s going on around them.
They grow
today to be gone tomorrow.
It’s easy
for me to think, “Duh, they’re flowers.”
“They
never leave the field.”
“I have
bigger fish to fry than making sure my stem stands up.”
“A flower
seems pretty irrelevant to my circumstances.”
But the
lilies aren’t the point.
My
relation to the lilies isn’t the point.
My faith,
and lack thereof, is the point Jesus is making.
Because
Jesus didn’t come for the lilies.
He came
for us,
though we did far worse than the lilies.
He’s
saying, “Look at these flowers. Look at all I do for them. But I didn’t even
come for them, I came for you. Trust me.”
He’s
using us for very different things; for things much larger and
scarier and unknown. He's doing it it to point us back to Himself.
So, while
we aren’t the lilies, we can learn from them.
We have
the same Sustainer, the same Security.
That,
however, doesn’t always take away the “why’s.”
Even now,
He could do all these things in my life without making it hard. I know that.
So why doesn’t
He make it easier and just do His thing and let us be?
I’ll
likely never understand the answer to that while I’m on earth.
But If
I’ve learned anything about faith, it’s that I need it because I
don’t have any clue why something is happening.
I may one
day know why. But I may not.
But I
know He’s caring for me much more than the lilies.
I can
spend my life asking why every day (those questions are truly
endless), but it’s not going to add anything but stress, helpless feelings,
anger, resentment.
I can
easily ignore my opportunity to have peace by trusting that the Sustainer of
the world knows me and exactly what I need (Mt 6:32), and continue to
wonder why,
why, why, wasting my time and energy away.
Or I can
give up my doubts, find peace and comfort in His care for even the lilies, and
rest assured that He knows the answer to my incessant questions.
Whatever
I do, He’s fully aware of why He’s doing these things, and He doesn’t owe
me an answer each time I ask. But I owe Him my trust. And I won’t add a single
hour to my life by withholding it.
