«Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble» (Matthew 6:34).
ONE MORNING I WAS SHOPPING at the supermarket when I was approached by a tall elderly man. I was in the fruit section when he spoke to me.
«When I was a kid,» he said, as he grabbed a mango, «we ate mangoes very much like this one. We picked them off the trees. There weren’t that many buildings back then. »
«My wife really likes mangoes,» I replied.
«Do you know what I do after I eat a mango?» he asked me. «I toss the skin into an organic waste container, which I then use as fertilizer. And whenever I can, I plant the seed. So someday others will be able to eat from the tree I planted.»
Without waiting for my reaction, he added, «Others planted the mango trees that I ate off of when I was a child.»
I don’t know how long we talked, but it was long enough to learn some things about Edward. He was eighty-seven years old. He was second generation Polish in the United States. He had a grateful heart. When he found out I liked to read, he told me about some of his favorite authors. One was Dale Carnegie; another, Leo Tolstoy.
I am always in a hurry, but that morning I put aside my haste to in order to talk to him. It is not every day that one has the privilege of «drinking» from that source of wisdom that our elders are. I still remember his parting words.
«Live in the present, sow for tomorrow, and do not fuel anxiety. It’s a phrase thought from Dale Carnegie,» he said.
When I got home, I looked for the Carnegie book with the pages already coming apart from the spine because of how old it is. In the first chapter, Carnegie comments on today’s verse. He says that there, Jesus’s words do not mean that we should not plan, or make provision, for tomorrow, but that we should not be anxious. This is precisely what the Greek term merimnan means in this passage: «to worry anxiously.”
I don’t know if Edward still remembers our encounter at the supermarket, but it helped me to remember some of the great teachings of the Sermon on the Mount. If the birds do not lack for food, will we, who are His possession acquired with the price of His blood, lack for food? If God clothes the flowers of the field with incomparable beauty, will we, the crown of His creation lack for clothing?
Dear Jesus, please help me remember that tomorrow has not yet arrived. While it arrives, please enable me today to put You first, and to believe that everything else will come in addition.
#AdultsDevotional
#RadioJovenAdventista
#MeditacionesDiarias
Taken from: Devotional Readings for Adults 2022
“GREAT IS OUR GOD!”
From: FERNANDO ZABALA
Collaborators: Xiomara Perdomo & Angelica Cuate
