The Antidote for Anxiety and Depression: Trust in Abba Father’s Care – Pt 1
To God You are Worth Much More than the Birds of the Air and the Flowers of the Field!
Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
– St. Matthew 6:25-34
I will never forget an object lesson that the Holy Spirit taught me a few years ago while I was on a psychiatric ward in a hospital in Barbados. I was a full time university student in a foreign country with no financial support when I took ill. Therefore, I was perpetually uneasy about how I was going to afford the hospital bills, medications, et cetera. That constant worry and anxiety compounded the illness.
One day New Dimensions Ministries (NDM) – the Church I attended in Barbados sent me a bouquet of flowers. I remember how I admired the beauty of those flowers and how much they lifted my soul in times of deep depression. So much so that I wanted that bouquet of flowers to last for a very long time, hence, I watered the oasis the flowers were in every day. Nevertheless, after a while all those flowers died.
On the bedside table I had a bowl of fruits and some birds flew into the room and ate my fruits. As I sat on the bed and watched the birds as they ate my fruits, I thought, “Well imagine those birds, they did not provide my fruits, they did not work for them, neither did they ask my permission to have them, they just showed up and ate what was already provided.”
