Worry, Worms, and Religion…

… There is nothing I won’t worry about.

I worry about finances, the future, and my family.

At the end of every needless worry is the reminder that it’s all utterly pointless and completely unnecessary. There is nothing I’ve ever fretted about that hasn’t eventually been resolved. No matter how bleak things look or how out of my control the situation may become, my anxiety has never improved the matter.

Never, ever, not even once.

When I was a little girl, my grandfather and I would sit on his porch and watch the birds. He could name them all and whistle their calls. He was just like St. Francis, if St. Francis smoked cigars and drank bourbon. Also unlike Francis, he wasn’t terribly religious, at least not in the obvious way. He never talked about the church or his views on religion, but he told me once that birds never worry about the worm anymore than flowers worry about the rain.

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or 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 in the sky; they do not sow or reap, they gather nothing into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them.

Are not you more important than they? Can any of you by worrying add a single moment to your life-span? Why are you anxious about clothes?

Learn from the way the wild flowers grow. They do not work or spin. But I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was clothed like one of them.
If God so clothes the grass of the field, which grows today and is thrown into the oven tomorrow, will he not much more provide for you, O you of little faith?

So do not worry and say, ‘What are we to eat?’ or ‘What are we to drink?’or ‘What are we to wear?’ All these things the pagans seek. Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides.

Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself. Sufficient for a day is its own evil.” [ Matthew 6:25-34]

Source

Anyway, I was feeling a bit anxious recently, to no avail. Then Sunday’s Gospel reading set it right.