I’m sick right now. Its the kind of sickness that starts as an itch in your throat and slowly sneaks its way into your nasal passageways and brain, leaving you incapacitated in just a matter of days. Now I don’t get sick very often, but there is something extremely interesting that happens to me every time I find myself feeling under the weather.

Fact: Whenever I’m sick, I crave healthy food.

Ask any of my closest friends and family and they’ll tell you the two things I hate most in the world are people not signaling while driving and vegetables (aka healthy foods), and yet when I’m sick I find myself craving salads, fruit juice, fresh veggies and all the things I would normally never want, let alone crave. But for some crazy reason my body knows that these are the things that will make me better.

I think in a lot of ways its the same way spiritually. Its in the moments that we find ourselves “spiritually sick”, runny nose and a broken heart, that we know there is only one thing that will make this all better. We crave what we know is best for us, even if were not sure why. We crave God, his unending mercy, grace, and forgiveness. In the midst of our spiritual sickness, our weary souls cry out to the one who gives true rest.

When Jesus encountered the sick man at the Pool of Bethesda he only asked him one question, “Do you want to get well”? Jesus knew that he was the answer to the man’s sickness. The man responded by asking Jesus to help carry him to the pool after it had been stirred, so he could be cured. But Jesus responded, “Pick up your mat and walk”. There are no shortcuts to getting well.

When I’m sick the only thing that will make me better is healthy food and lots of rest. So why do I think things would be different in the spiritual realm? If I’m sick, there’s Jesus. There is no quick way to get healthy. Jesus isn’t like Airborne, a one-time only, stir into your water, make you 100% better in just ten minutes kind of deal.

No Jesus is the opposite. He’s the healthy diet, the food you crave when you know your sick, the kind of food that if you keep eating it the rest of your life, you will be healthy for the rest of your life.

So I guess the question is “Do you want to get well”?

We worry because we have no control. Somewhere deep inside, we all feel the sense that this life isn’t really ours to live, like maybe it doesn’t make sense to have control, to have it all figured out, and this freaks us out. So we externalize our fear into worry, because its the only way we feel safe. But the world is not safe, it has no guarantees and feels no special allegiance to our well being. Most days it seems like the world is against us, like we have to struggle just to make it through the day, but the TRUTH is… we don’t.

If no one has told you this yet, God exists, and more than that he loves you. He loves you so much that he’s taken control of your life for you, not in an overbearing power hungry way, but in the same way we look after those we love.  He made you to live an abundant life full of love, joy, peace, hope, and faith, words that often lose their meaning in our world.

So if there is a God who loves us, why are we so worried all the time? Beats me… but here’s what God says in response to our fears.

Do Not Worry

 ²⁵“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 important than food, and the body more important than clothes? ²⁶Look 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? ²⁷Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?

 ²⁸“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. ²⁹Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. ³⁰If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?

³¹So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ ³²For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. ³³But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. ³⁴Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

I like to think that I’m important, but the only thing that makes me important is the fact that God loves me. So here’s the challenge, to me and to you, do not worry. God’s got us covered, and he even tells us how to go about not worrying. In verse 33 he says it plain and simple, “seek first the kingdom of God”.

Really is that it? Yes, its that simple.

Its that simple because if we spend our time actively seeking the kingdom of heaven, we find ourselves and our fears becoming less and less important, and that is a freeing thing.

With faith,

A. Perez