Trusting in the Lord as a New Semester Begins
The following was written to our student and seminary community as a new semester begins in Spring semester 2009.
We are called to trust the Lord as do the lilies of the field and the birds of the air. These days test our responses to Jesus’ invitation to the life of freedom found in Matthew 6:25-34Matthew 6:25-34
English: World English Bible - WEB
25 Therefore, I tell you, don’t be anxious for your life: what you will eat, or what you will drink; nor yet for your body, what you will wear. Isn’t life more than food, and the body more than clothing?
26 See the birds of the sky, that they don’t sow, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns. Your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t you of much more value than they?
27 “Which of you, by being anxious, can add one cubit to the measure of his life?
28 Why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They don’t toil, neither do they spin,
29 yet I tell you that even Solomon in all his glory was not dressed like one of these.
30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today exists, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, won’t he much more clothe you, you of little faith?
31 “Therefore don’t be anxious, saying, ‘What will we eat?’, ‘What will we drink?’ or, ‘With what will we be clothed?’
32 For the Gentiles seek after all these things, for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.
33 But seek first God’s Kingdom, and his righteousness; and all these things will be given to you as well.
34 Therefore don’t be anxious for tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Each day’s own evil is sufficient.
WP-Bible plugin. Yet which is really riskier? Do we put our trust in the world of stocks and bonds and sure things like punting on seminary to go to business school where we think security is guaranteed? Or do we trust the One whose joy has overflowed into Creation and as Chesterton put it, “…says with delight to the rising sun in the morning: Do it again!” At least in these days we have seen the unmasking of the charade of trusting in this world. For now. Soon you and I will be tempted again, maybe even later today, to forego the promises of God for the sure bets of this age. Just remember that under the cold ground of this wintry campus lie daffodils and azaleas preparing for a spring blaze of blooming. Within the stark limbs of the redbud and the dogwood trees is life in the waiting. We know that because we know of God’s faithfulness. It is no risk to trust our souls, our careers, our years, our lives, our eternity to the God who makes daffodils and dogwoods. Or raises His Son from the dead. Welcome, with trust in God, to a new semester of preparing for a life of ministry.
