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Morning Devotion for the Season after Pentecost

September 29, 2025

Reading: Matthew 6:25-34

‘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.

‘So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.

Meditation-Rebecca Northington

There are so many different ways to approach this passage. Of course we worry about what we eat, and if we will have clothes that fit, much less whether they will make us feel good about ourselves, respected or even admired. In fact, what we eat and what we wear consumes so many of us that people regularly say “the phone eats first”, as they snag a picture of their meal and swiftly upload it to their Instagram before their first bite! Influencers on Instagram and TikTok can make a substantial income from “wearing” products on their bodies and their faces, as many of us are mindlessly subjected and manipulated by the human obsession with appearances. Do we appear to be stylish, trendy, powerful, young and cool, by what we eat, where we eat it, and how we dress?

Should appearances be more valuable than whether or not our stomachs are filled with nutritional foods that are sourced responsibly, or our bodies are appropriately covered for the environment in which we live? This is a genuine question, and one that is not new to the 21st century.

St. Augustine famously wrestled with this same tension. Did he want the pears because he was starving for them? Or was he falling into that human trap of wanting what he wanted, without need, appropriating those pears by no right or honorable method, but merely for his fancy and by his will? This tension plagues St. Augustine in the 400’s, until he finally surrenders his heart to God, which he eloquently describes in his Confessions. In Book X, Augustine says when considering the things that could distract him from his love for God, “none of these do I love when I love my God. And yet I do love a kind of light, a kind of voice, a certain fragrance, a food and an embrace, when I love my God: a light, voice, fragrance, food and embrace for my inmost self, where something limited to no place shines into my mind, where something not snatched away by passing time sings for me, where something no breath blows away yields to me its scent, where there is savor undiminished by famished eating, and where I am clasped in a union from which no satiety can tear me away. This is what I love, when I love my God”.

Throughout the following centuries there were many Church Fathers and Mothers who also wrestled with this tension of what the human world convinces us we want, and what a life with God at the center drives us to pursue. Thomas Merton, the Trappist Monk who lived from 1915-1968, also wrestled with the seductions of the world and the distractions they proved to hold when working on a relationship with God. He wrote beautifully of this tension and strove to keep his life as undistracted and as pure as he could at the Abbey of our Lady of Gethsemani in Kentucky.

I am not encouraging us to sell our belongings and head to the nearest Monastery. Jesus put it beautifully as he cautioned his disciples in John 15: 18-19. “If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own. However, because you do not belong to the world, but I chose you out of the world, for this reason the world hates you.” We cannot belong to this world. We cannot let this world dictate who we are and how we are while in it. Some might call it the devil, others just the sinful nature of man waiting at every turn. I think of God wrestling with Jacob in Genesis(noteworthy because it is at the beginning of our great book), and what this story really tells us. I believe we all intuitively, deeply, in our bones, love God. Whether or not we can identify and pursue that love, I believe it is in all of us, placed there in our own creation. There is so much in the world that attempts to eclipse that love, to distract us from it, including our very human nature. How can we make that transition from putting ourselves first, worrying about our own food and clothing, our own prestige and power, our own primacy? Because when we see these great heroes choose God instead of themselves, it’s like the doors open to their real life. Jacob becomes Israel, St.Augustine is love made manifest, and Thomas Merton is complete, after decades of feeling lost. When we allow God to feed us, clothe us, love us, hear us, and hold us, all the other stuff melts away as irrelevant as it always was. When we choose God we are “clasped in a union from which no satiety can tear” us away. And no amount of power or attention, food, or fancy clothes, can ever give us this.

The Lord's Prayer

Our Father, who art in heaven,

hallowed be thy Name,

thy kingdom come,

thy will be done,

on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our trespasses,

as we forgive those

who trespass against us.

And lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from evil.