This treasure comes from The Book of Q or The Gospel of Thomas: “I am telling you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. Isn’t life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Think of the ravens. They do not plant, harvest, or store grain in barns, and God feeds them. Aren’t you worth more than the birds? Which one of you can add a single day to your life by worrying? And why do you worry about clothing? Think of the way lilies grow. They do not work or spin. But even Solomon in all his splendor was not as magnificent. If God puts beautiful clothes on the grass that is in the field today and tomorrow is thrown into a furnace, won’t he put clothes on you, faint hearts? So don’t worry, thinking, ‘What will we eat’ or ‘What will we drink,’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For everybody in the whole world does that, and your father knows that you need these things. Instead, make sure of his rule over you, and all these things will be yours as well.”
We work all our lives like slaves so that we can buy necessities and trinkets. We go to church or mosque or temple or cathedral or synagogue to confirm our faith and show to the world that we are believers. Or we shun those buildings and find God in nature. Either way, none of this stops us from working like slaves, because we have forgotten our God-given abilities to manifest what we need to sustain our physical bodies.
I have clients who will worry themselves to death when they discover that they have no reason to worry – so ingrained is this worry in their psyche.
Yes, we do need to provide for what we eat and drink and wear. While doing that, do we thank God and show our gratitude? Or do we either work like slaves or arrogantly take what we have for granted?
We need to provide for all these things, and at the moment we do this using what is available to us on earth. We have strands of our DNA that will apparently enable us to manifest what we need, and it is claimed that these strands are disconnected.
I am not sure I have a clear answer on this issue. Do we, on the one hand, simply live from day to day and trust that God will provide and we need to do nothing? Or do we plant foods and make clothes and thank God that we have the ability to do this? Or do we do both?
I firmly believe that God gave us gifts to use so that we can take care of ourselves, and God is not our babysitter. Am I wrong? Does that indicate that I do not trust God to provide everything I will ever need? Or am I right and we have to take care of ourselves in our physical bodies because God provided us with the ability to do so?
We still have so much to learn about our faith, and in the challenging times ahead that will be our main focus.
Namaste
