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But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. (Matthew 6:33)

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Pastor Michael alluded to this text yesterday.\xa0 Israel was reminded through their wilderness journey that God was the one who sustained them and that seeking God and living out his commands was the best path to flourishing.\xa0 Together, these formed the essential quality of humility in the Israelites\u2014a pursuit of and dependence on God that led to life, even in the desert.\xa0

Jesus echoes this desert lesson when he says: do not worry, but rather seek first God\u2019s kingdom, trusting that he will provide everything else.

This isn\u2019t quite the way our world works though.\xa0 Many of us are engaged quite deeply in a pursuit of our own provision.\xa0 It can look all sorts of ways.\xa0 We seek to secure our career or financial future.\xa0 We seek to keep up a certain lifestyle of the right house, clothes, friends, and activities.\xa0 We seek to secure our own health through fitness, diet, and in pandemic times: keeping to or fighting against restrictions.\xa0 Whatever way the pursuit of provision might look, it often betrays a striving on our part that\u2019s somewhat thin on trust in God.

Not that we don\u2019t trust God, but we tend to do it after we\u2019ve secured the important stuff ourselves.\xa0

Maybe some of that\u2019s changing now, though.\xa0 This past year or so, a new reality may have begun leeching into our psyche.\xa0 Our sense of control has been thwarted many times over during this pandemic time.\xa0 Unpredictability and disruptions have increasingly become normal, forcing our tight, controlling fists to loosen somewhat, whether we had intended it or not.\xa0 The reality is, we just can\u2019t plan as definitively or control as absolutely as we once could\u2026 or at least thought we could.

And maybe that\u2019s a good thing.\xa0 Perhaps it\u2019s closer, in fact, to the truth of our situation\u2014as people who\u2019ve long been marginalized understand too well.\xa0 We can\u2019t control the future, in fact there\u2019s very little that we can control.\xa0 And in any case, provision was never actually ours to secure ourselves.\xa0 It was always a gift of God to be received humbly, in thanks.

When we seek our own provision first, we no longer have need to entrust ourselves to anyone or anything else.\xa0 Our neighbours and the creation are reduced to commodities to be used or competitors to be subdued.\xa0 We begin to believe that we can live without others, in fact.\xa0 And without God too.\xa0 Our loneliness is complete.\xa0

But when we seek first God\u2019s kingdom and his righteousness we are placed in a posture of trust and dependence, because to truly know what this pursuit means: we need to talk to God, listen to God, obey God, trust God.\xa0 It\u2019s his kingdom, after all.\xa0 But when we do this, healthy relationships with God, with one another, and with our daily provision is restored.\xa0 And, embedded in this trusting, life-giving community of the Triune God, we discover that there is always enough for today.\xa0 And not just for us, but for everyone else too.\xa0