HE TAKES CARE Part I

Do not worry about material things is the message of Jesus.
Mathew 6. 25-30
25 Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?
26 Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?
27 Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?
28 So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin;
29 and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
30 Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
As we are constituted of matter, besides being soul and spirit, and we live in a physical-material world, our tendency is to see things much more from a physical perspective and that is the reason we so much valorize palpable things.
Jesus came down here to this world and showed us that what is material passes by quickly, and isn’t it true? Who among the mortals have lived through the centuries and is still alive, one, two, three hundred years and so forth?
The truth is that we will pass by as a fog which is now an then it is not.
Then, in the words of Jesus, it is not worth our trouble, our torture, doing of materiality, and for many of materialism, the core of our lives.
The words of Jesus, above, propose resting, hope and faith. We become men and women of little faith when we do of our faith a call to an existence primarily based on visible and tangible things. Visible and tangible things play their part in the short period of time we live here and we have to give attention to them too, but not as if visible and tangible things were the only ones worthy of importance. We can not miss the opportunity to prosper, but prosperity has to be understood as something that comes to us; we should always remember of the apostle Paul’s words: But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition (1 Timothy 6.9).
What can not be accepted is the standardization of God’s blessings as some people have tried to do when they say: God wants to give you the best car, God wants that you may have the best house of the city (a kind of discourse influenced by positivism without reflection). We have to ask how many “the best car(s)” will be necessary to fulfill this utterance (in a Brazilian context)? Which is the best car? What does this car have to have? This message is the sort of message of consumerism. We live in a country (Brazil) where the maximum speed allowed varies from 50 to 70 miles per hour.
What is the objective of having a car that reach 155 m/h but ostentation? How many “the best house(s)” of the city will be necessary? What does it mean to have the best house? How many believers have the best car or the best house? How many of them are the most successful in the city?
Real faith does not need inconsistent inductions to be exercised; it simply exists and then through it some will have more and other less, according the measure of faith that God gives to each one (Romans 12.3).
The same way that there are several levels of intelligence, perception, aptitude, physical strength, there are several levels of faith, of results of faith, of spirituality. There is no evidence in the Bible that God forcibly wants everybody spiritually in the same level, but rather he will try to make good use of each one according to their characteristics.
God is the owner of silver and gold, but this does not mean that He will have to bless us the way we want or how somebody prophesied to us.
Jesus, in the verses above, in my point of view, wants to say that those who see in the Father, see in Him the meaning to their lives, will be assisted by the Father and the Father will not forget their necessities. What we need of material things He has to give us, we have just to believe in Him.
It seems that today we are not able to bring out the kind of belief that Jesus proposed, which starts in God, subsists in God and in God rests, because He takes care of us. Our faith became a material faith, I think due to the fact that we started by the wrong front, the front of the results our faith can produce (I have seen too much emphasis on the results) and not on the faith itself that consequently will bring results; For many, the aims are the results and not faith in Jesus. Faith which is faith, according to the gospel, will produce results, results that we don’t need to insist with our brothers and sisters to show, because the things of the Holy Spirit are like the wind that blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes to (John 3.8).
There is no tricks, keys, secrets for His taking care of us, for the results of our faith happen; we have just to believe in Him and to live for Him, with our body, soul and spirit, with truth (Mark 12.30). It is like a plant that grows, becomes strong when the earth is watered. The faith revealed in Jesus’ gospel is faith that depends on the water He has to give. He knows what His plants need and the measure they need to be well.

To be continued ...

José Martins