Sparrows and Lilies of the Field

...joining in with Floss at her blog to write about the The Thrill of What You Already Have...

This will be an introspective post, so sit down with your coffee as you are invited to take more than a minute to read about a virtual friend and what she has written here about needing a summer job to help the dormouse and her husband get through the summer on a more even note.

After reading what the dormouse wrote, it stirred me into thinking about how God takes care of us in ways we can't even imagine.  This is what she says in part of her post and in quoting scripture:

I have spent a couple of nights lying awake worrying, ... I need to bring my worrying mind to rest and try to trust God... 

"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?  Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?"

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The "thrill of what I already have" is a powerful memory of my mother in the late 1960's.

To set the scene: she and I lived in a small, conservative Texas town.  She was divorced, coming out of an almost catatonic 18 month depression (remember, we did not have psychiatric drugs back then save for electroshock therapy).  We had just moved out of her parents' home where we had lived for two years, completely dependent on them. We had very little money, living in a small and very old rental house made of stone.

The memory which I want to recall as most impressive, however, is that of mother saying many times that if God could care enough to provide food for the sparrows and to clothe the lilies of the field in glory, that He would certainly take care of us.   And He did.  She died in 2000, and He continued to take care of her throughout her life, as she had always trusted.

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Certainly not all of what gives us a thrill is on the physical plane, as this particular memory still gives me pause.  I think of mother speaking of the well being of the sparrows and the beauty of the lilies when worry begins it insidious way of worming into my soul, and I am always comforted.