Sermonette: Jan. 13, 2020

This is from the devotional, “God is in the Manger” by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German Lutheran pastor who was imprisoned and executed for participating in a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler.

Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ Or ‘What will we drink?’ Or Whatever will we wear?’ For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your Heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today. (Matthew 6:31-34)

Possessions delude the human heart into believing that they provide security and a worry-free existence, but in truth they are the very cause of worry. For the heart that is fixed on possessions comes with a suffocating burden of worry. Worries lead to treasure, and treasure leads back to worry. We want to secure our lives through possessions; through worry we want to become worry free, but the truth turns out to be the opposite. The shackles that bind us to possessions, that hold us fast to possessions are themselves worries. The misuse of possessions consists in our using them for security for the next day. Worry is always directed toward tomorrow. In the strictest sense, however, possessions are intended only for today. It is precisely the securing of tomorrow that makes me so insecure today. “Today’s trouble is enough for today” says Matthew 6:34b. Only those who place tomorrow in God’s hands and receive what they need to live today are truly secure. Receiving daily liberates us from tomorrow. Thought for tomorrow delivers us up to endless worry.

This particular excerpt was written from prison, just before Bonhoeffer was executed, to his fiancé, Maria von Wedemeyer: I have had the experience over and over again that the quieter it is around me, the clearer do I feel the connection to you. It is as though in the solitude the should develops senses which we hardly know in everyday life. Therefore I have not felt lonely or abandoned for one moment. You, the parents, all of you, the friends and students of mind at the front, all are constantly present to me… therefore you must not think me unhappy. What is happiness and unhappiness? It depends so little on the circumstances; it depends really only on that which happens inside a person.