Wednesday, September 21
Behold
Matthew 6:25-34 NLT
“So I tell you, don’t worry about everyday life—whether you have enough food, drink, and clothes. Doesn’t life consist of more than food and clothing? Look at the birds. They don’t need to plant or harvest or put food in barns because your heavenly Father feeds them. And you are far more valuable to him than they are. Can all your worries add a single moment to your life? Of course not.
“And why worry about your clothes? Look at the lilies and how they grow. They don’t work or make their clothing, yet Solomon in all his glory was not dressed as beautifully as they are. And if God cares so wonderfully for flowers that are here today and gone tomorrow, won’t he more surely care for you? You have so little faith!
“So don’t worry about having enough food or drink or clothing. Why be like the pagans who are so deeply concerned about these things? Your heavenly Father already knows all your needs, and he will give you all you need from day to day if you live for him and make the Kingdom of God your primary concern.
“So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today.”
Be Perfect
In forty-five living verses (Matthew 5:3-47) he poured into the goal of perfection such a warm, human and this-worldly content that the goal, when stated, though not bounded by this life, was yet firmly grounded in this life and was one that must be wrought in human relationships. The key to the verse, “Be ye therefore perfect,” is the word “therefore.” It points back, not merely to the preceding verses as some have thought, but to the whole of what he had been saying. It gathers up and pours into verse forty-eight the whole of the forty-five preceding verses and makes these the content of the perfection. From these verses we find that there are twenty-seven marks of the perfect life, and these marks show how deeply social and yet how deeply individual the ideal is.
E. Stanley Jones, The Christ of the Mount.