Thin Air, High Hope

This morning, I was reading in Matthew and came across this familiar passage:

“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… Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If 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, you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’…
…But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.”

And yet, my first thought was, “but people DO go hungry. People DO lack resources, even those who seem to do everything “right”” (whatever that may mean). And what exactly does “seeking the kingdom” mean? It seems almost harsh to imagine looking at someone with true hunger and telling them simply to seek the kingdom and not worry about it.

And yet, the people listening to Jesus say these words knew poverty intimately.

These questions troubled me. But as every spiritual teacher I’ve ever had has encouraged, when scripture troubles you, acknowledge the tension and explore the question. This is what I tried to do here. As always, if you are reading this, and have additional thoughts to share, I more than welcome them!

I recently heard a sermon on the Sermon on the Mount, which includes this passage. The preacher emphasized that this sermon wasn’t meant to be taken as a personal rulebook but as a set of principles for a community. Not just individuals trusting God for their own provision, but a kingdom: God’s intended way of life, where the values of Jesus shape our relationships, our priorities, and our care for one another.

As I remembered his words, they helped me to reframe the passage.

I was spiritually raised in a faith tradition that often spoke of “seeking the kingdom.” This usually meant a focus on evangelism and emphasized baptism as the defining moment in your walk with God. You get baptized, then your goal is to baptize others, who baptize others. The growing number of baptisms was seen as the expansion of God’s kingdom. We understood numbers as fruit, proof that the mission was bearing results. The kingdom, as we saw it then, was about right behavior, avoiding sin, and warning others to do the same.

Now, I’m not sure that’s the complete picture of what Jesus meant when he spoke these words.

As I was talking with Alex this morning, the image of having guests in our home came to mind. Bear with me here, it may be an imperfect comparison, but this is what I came up with:

Baptism is like the front door. Everyone who enters our home, I hope, uses the door, (though desperation may drive someone through a window, but that’s a discussion for another day!). But the door itself isn’t the point. If we celebrated every person who walked through our doorway without caring what happened next, that would be extremely odd. Our house might be full, but it wouldn’t necessarily feel like a home.

Instead, we focus on what happens after someone enters through our door. We want our guests to feel safe, loved, welcomed, and cared for. We want to build something that feels like family.

When we seek the kingdom, we’re not seeking numbers. We’re seeking a household shaped by Jesus’ principles: a way of living marked by grace, generosity, mercy, truth, and love.

At the beginning of this year, Alex was laid off. As the months went by with no job on the horizon, we started asking the hard questions. What if there’s no job for three months? Six? Twelve?

And yet, I felt very little anxiety, something that surprised me, since I’m generally a pretty anxious person. I realized I had great confidence in our community. Not because I believed God would drop a miracle from the sky, or that we deserved anything because of our “good” behavior, but because we are surrounded by people who live out the values Jesus taught. I believed we would have what we needed, not in isolation, but together.

And while accepting help would be hard, I could rest more easily knowing we live among people who model compassion, generosity, and love, and that we are committed to doing the same for others.

What if the promise of Matthew 6 isn’t calling individuals to ignore very real needs for the sake of numbers, or to trust blindly that struggle won’t come, but rather to imagine a kingdom where our needs are met through one another, and no one carries their burdens alone?

I’m not claiming to offer a theological argument. There are entire libraries exploring the idea of the Kingdom of God by extremely educated people! But it seems to me that when we seek what God values, lifting others above ourselves, living generously, seeing the poor and the marginalized, offering sacrificial love and irrational grace, we begin to create the kind of kingdom Jesus describes throughout his teachings.

A kingdom where people don’t seek their own advantage,
but look to the good of others first.
Where humility shapes how we live,
and mercy guides how we respond.
A kingdom where no one holds tightly to what they have,
but shares freely so that no one goes without.
Where love is not just spoken,
but seen in action, so real and tangible
that it becomes the very way we are known.
A kingdom that makes room for the outcast,
welcomes the overlooked,
and refuses to let anyone struggle alone.
Where everyone has what they need,
and maybe even more than they ever dared to hope for.
And perhaps this is the promise:
That when we seek this kind of kingdom, God’s kind of Kingdom, first,
That “all these things will be given to you as well.”