And do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, nor be worried. For all the nations of the world seek after theses things, and your Father knows that you need them. Instead, seek his kingdom and these things will be added to you. Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good please to give you the kingdom. Luke 12: 29-32
What do you seek daily in your life? Do you worry about it?
The bottom line of this is we are not to be focus on things of this earth but on the kingdom of God. We are not to doubt that God will meet our needs. Therefore, we can put our minds onto other things. We have better things to pursue. We need to mind the affairs of our soul with diligence and care and trust God with all the rest.
Luke seems to be proposing to his hellenized and city-dwelling readers the same ideal as the Greek and Latin of his time. Or at least he decided to combat the same vices that they did. But, unlike those thinkers, he did not count on a philosophical meditation or on personal discipline in order to make a success of this liberation and achieve this inner calm; instead, he counted on confidence in God, who is concerned with his creatures in a paternal way.
That is what is spelled out in v. 30 in a phrase that reminds us of love for one’s enemies (6:32–34) by virtue of the contrast between Christians and the rest of the human race. Everybody strives for “these things,” these possessions, these material realities represented by food and drink, not to mention everything else, clothing, lodging, and pleasures. The text takes such good aim at the essentials that the images strike city-dwellers as much as people who live in the country. Each person has a deep desire to live. Now in Christian tradition neither Jesus nor Luke nor Matthew looks down on these possessions, which are needed for life on earth. But it is necessary to realize that such possessions are dependent on God, more exactly on the one who is “your Father.” He who in 11:13 offered the Spirit is here concerned with all the rest about which it is admitted “that you need them”. Although the Father “knows”, he is not just content with this knowledge. He adds action to the thought, the gift to the knowledge.
Anxiety should no more characterize the human being then should inner detachment or fixed indifference. Men and women are, according to Scripture, beings with desires, made of flesh and blood. This desire to live and to do so happily, with accepted pleasure and in an established relationship, has a name, which in Greek is a quest, a request, an approach, an aspiration, and a movement. The object of this quest is indicated by a single word “kingdom”, which is immediately linked to a person, “his,” that is, the kingdom of “your Father”. All the wisdom that is linked to creation and providence (vv. 22–30) is all of a sudden illumined in a new way. Up to this point one could have been suspicious of such wisdom. But here all at once the reign comes along to restore to creation and providence what the fall and temporality had taken away from them. In Luke’s eyes, God’s reign is the promise in the process of being fulfilled, hope crystallized in Jesus, in his Word and in the Spirit that has been his since he was raised to heaven.
God’s providence, with its fits and starts and its failures, is drawn away from equivocation toward convincing proof. When threatened, creation groans not in order to complain but in order to get ready, see Rom 8:22. The text gradually moves attention from victory over worrying to the search for the kingdom. Men and women who obey Christ’s order and respect the “instead” and plunge into the search for God, therefore have the assurance, confidence, and joy of which philosophers have only a premonition. God offers them all the rest, without luxury but unsparingly.
Seek the kingdom of God above all else. Don’t worry about the day to day things of life. Let God take care of you in all aspects of life.
Dear Heavenly Father,
Thank you for taking care of us. Thank you that we don’t have to worry about the everyday things of life.
In Jesus Name
Amen
