God,
We come before you knowing you are our creator.
You are the one that gives breath to our bodies.
You did in the beginning and with each new breath we feel you enlivening us all over again in this moment,
In this place.
I invite you to find a seat that is comfortable.
If you are sitting on a chair make sure your feet are placed flat onto the ground for stability,
Making contact with the earth.
If you are seated on the floor or on a cushion,
Move around and wiggle a bit.
Get yourself in a place that feels right,
A place that feels sustainable.
Bring your hands to your knees.
Gently close your eyes as we enter this space of listening,
Of practicing presence,
Of being.
There is a section from the Gospel of Matthew where Jesus reminds us not to worry,
Not to sow,
Reap,
Gather,
Do all that sweaty work for the birds of the air.
The birds don't do that.
The birds don't earn their food.
They just are.
The wind beneath their wings holds them up.
And if God feeds these birds of the air,
Why do we worry?
Why do we stress and strive and fret?
Where does your body feel the stress and the fret and the worry of today?
Of the things that cause you anxiety and worry,
Those things that are on your plate,
Your to-do list.
Where does your body remind you that it's holding this energy?
Is it between your eyebrows and that little furrow?
Bring your attention there now.
Let your eyelids be heavy but also light.
Let the wrinkles fall away from between your brows.
Roll your shoulders back a little bit and feel as the stress and the tension from your neck falls.
Let your shoulders drop to that stability of the earth.
Take a deep breath in and on your out breath let your shoulders fall.
Let your brows relax.
As we remember that God feeds the birds of the air,
That God is the current beneath their wings,
That God surrounds them.
Jesus continues to talk about the lilies of the field,
How they grow.
They neither toil nor spin.
They do not flurry about fretting about clothing.
God clothes these lilies and the grass of the field,
Which even now is alive today and tomorrow Jesus says is thrown into the oven.
The transience of the lilies allows them to be vibrant and to relax into God's beautiful providence and provision and allows themselves to be clothed with beauty and with grace and with poise and they do not worry about tomorrow.
I want us to take a few moments to focus on these visualizations.
Imagine the weightless flittering of a bird,
The swaying of the lilies in a field with a slight breeze,
The way that they both navigate life with a trust that is faithful,
Beautiful,
Effortless.
As we spend these minutes thinking about the bird's wings and the lilies leaves,
Focus on your breath,
Your inhale and your exhale.
If you would like,
When you inhale,
You may think or say,
God is God and on the exhale,
Today is enough for today.
God is God.
Today is enough for today.
God is God.
It is easy to feel the grip of yesterday,
Of our baggage,
Of that last conversation,
Of a blossoming resentment,
Something that just doesn't sit right,
That has already happened.
It is equally easy to be tugged forward into the future anxieties of back to school shopping or what's for dinner or how am I going to say that to them?
Jesus reminds us that today is enough for today,
That now is now and that God is God.
As we go about our days,
Bring a sense of ease and of peace and of confidence that just like the bird,
We are provided for by the one who can,
The one who does.
Like the lilies of the field,
We don't need to worry.
We can be free to sway in the beauty of the clothing that we already have,
The magnificence that is our body,
Clothed not with masks or beautiful ornaments or makeup but our authentic created self made in the very image of God.
Closing with these words of Jesus from Matthew 6 verse 34,
So do not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will bring worries of its own,
Today is enough for today.
Amen and Amen.
