Change Your Clothes

"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? 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? Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature? So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 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? Therefore do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' "For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble” (Matt. 6:25-34).

A lily lives a quiet life and radiates its beauty to glorify God, not itself. A life in this world comes with an everyday pressure to clothe oneself. But clothing oneself is to build a facade that is intended to look suitable by the world’s standards. Any light shining from what you have clothed yourself with is but a mere reflection of the fading glimmer and false “light” of the world. This “light” is artificial. It’s based in selfishness, lust, greed, and lies, which means that the beauty of what you’ve clothed yourself with is subject to change at a whim. The effort it takes to continually reclothe yourself, to keep up with the world’s standard of beauty, can be a very stressful and rather impossible task.

Consider the lilies. They do not clothe themselves. Their beauty is not artificial. They have no worries. Their life is a life of glory to God.

Jesus understands that the worries of life are, much of the time, unsubstantial, fabrications of perceived importance, based on worldly standards, for the purposes of worldly glory. Would you like the worry to subside in your life? Live like a lily! Let your purpose be to glorify God. Let the light emanating from you be the divine, true light. Shed the clothes that you made for yourself. Be clothed in Christ.

-Cary Gillis D.Min.

May 15, 2022