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‘Take therefore no thought for the morrow.’
Mat_6:34
Subtle as the temptation is to worry and to be anxious, there is no question that it is a quite different temper which the Christian man is bidden and expected to learn. There is no question about the Lord’s phrase; there is no question for the Christian man about the absolute disloyalty of worry and anxiety.
But there are two things which are necessary if this conviction of the Providence of God is to become a reality for us.
I. The mastery of Christ.—We must accept the mastery of Jesus. It is to His disciples that He brings peace. Are we disciples?
II. Live one day at a time.—‘Be not anxious for the morrow,’ for, after all, it is only to-day that we have to live. We look forward and try and think out how we will act, and to-morrow it is all so different, and meanwhile we have exhausted the nerve and we have used the energy, which God intended to give us anew for the fresh day’s work. There was no gathering of the manna for more than one day at a time. The word of Christ comes back to the disciple, and it is a question whether we will be loyal.
The Rev. H. P. Cronshaw.
Illustration‘Every Christian is, or ought to be, in that state respecting his sins, that he has nothing to do except with the sins of the current day. As soon as he was converted he was justified; in other words, the very time when he first felt real faith and repentance, all the sins which he had ever committed from his childhood, up to that period, were freely and fully, and perfectly cancelled. He was washed—clean as snow. From that time, he “needeth not save to wash his feet.” Each day, therefore, he brings the guilt which he has been accumulating since last he prayed, and lays it at the foot of the cross; to be cleansed in the same fountain. But this is all he has to do with it. It needs not to be passed to a current account; for a debt once paid is never again due. Neither need he be thinking of the sins and transgressions into which he may, and into which he will fall again—because to-morrow’s guilt will find to-morrow’s grace. He has only to feel penitently, and cast the day’s burden where, surely, alone it can be laid—where the burden of other days has been cast. Oh! what a happy lot is theirs, who having nothing between them and God but the sins of the day; who, knowing the past is all forgiven, and that they have the same grace to fall back upon when it is needed, can say, “Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.” ’
‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.’
Mat_6:34
I. Christ’s teaching.—Notice the way in which Christ teaches it. He asserts the universal extent of God’s providence over all His creatures, and His knowledge and control of all their actions; and He instances the least considerable of those creatures as being the constant objects of His observance and care. ‘Take, therefore, no thought for the morrow.’ Our Lord’s words are a prohibition against an increasing anxiety—not enjoining a culpable heedlessness. We do not read in these words of Jesus any condemnation of worldly activity. Energy, forethought, and activity are the source both of public and private prosperity. He only, to quote Father Didon, condemns that inordinate love of the luxuries of this life which enervates work, and the licence of selfish pleasure.
II. The universal providence of God.—This being so, we may go at once to the doctrine laid down. It is the universal providence of God. And this is not a mere speculation or fancy. It is a Divine truth, a truth of revelation; and a truth surely necessarily involved in the acknowledgment of God’s being. To those who are honouring God by seeking first His kingdom and righteousness, putting His honour and service in the right place, it is knowledge worth the having to know that nothing happens by chance.
III. Daily life and conduct.—The lesson that I want to influence your daily life and conduct is that of God’s providence. We seem to need in these days of hurry and bustle and startling events, and of endless perplexities, we seem to need more reality in our religion, more realisation of the actual presence and the overruling providence of God, more prayer for Divine teaching, more self-denial for Christ’s sake, more self-dedication to works and labour of love, more simple appreciation of the truth as it is in Jesus, more belief, shall I say—may I say—in God’s word, more conviction and practical manifestation of this principle in our lives.
Prebendary Eardley-Wilmot.