“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? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?” (Matt. 6:25-27)
Why shouldn't we worry about our life?
Jesus is clearly stating our identity with this statement. He is stating that we are not the physical body. The physical body is a temporary vehicle each of us drives for a while. We are the spirit-person within these bodies.Therefore, Jesus is speaking of worrying about our temporary physical body - which will die at some point anyway.
In other words, we are each spiritual persons residing within a temporary physical body. Each of us is an individual spiritual being, transcendental to the physical world. The physical bodies we wear are temporary. They will each die within a few decades, and for some, more quickly. Then we will move on.
These physical bodies are designed to be clothed and fed from materials from the physical world around us. Nature has been designed to supply all the food, water, and clothing our physical body needs. (And the scarcity in this world has been the product of humanity's hoarding and greed.)
Jesus is also speaking to the many anxieties of those he was preaching to. Their anxiousness for their physical day-to-day survival is apparent from Jesus’ focus upon food and clothing.
This is certainly because many of the people he spoke to were poor and had to toil in the fields or otherwise endeavor. Though Jesus was not saying they didn’t have to work anymore, he was saying that we can have confidence that God will take care of each of us. We don’t have to worry about our physical survival. Instead, our focus should be on re-developing our relationship with Him.
Jesus did not come to teach us about taking care of the body. That was not his ultimate concern. His concern was the spiritual welfare of others. Because the physical world was designed with the veil of the physical body — making it difficult to see or communicate with the Supreme Being and designed to fool us into thinking we are these bodies — we have become in some sense separated from Supreme Being. This was our choice.
What does Jesus want from us?
Jesus' purpose is to bring us back to our original relationship with the Supreme Being — a relationship of love and loving service.Although it is necessary to work to maintain the physical body, that should not be our focus in life. Life's focus should be upon regaining this relationship that Jesus is teaching about.
If one is focused upon the physical body’s survival, its reputation, its family or its other physical needs, the focus cannot be upon Supreme Being. It is a simple matter of focus.
Certainly, one can focus first and foremost on the Supreme Being and use this physical body to get closer to Him and serve Him. In such a consciousness, taking care of the body and family can also become part of that service. In this case, the body can become a tool in our focus on God.
There is a fine line here, however. But the issue of focus influences our consciousness.
At the end of the life of this body, our focus and consciousness direct us to our next destination. The mind is like a wind vane — it indicates our direction.
Therefore, in order to change our direction, we must change our consciousness. This means redirecting our focus from the mundane elements of the physical world to the transcendental elements of the Supreme Being.
Redirecting our focus can be done through prayer, glorifying and praising the Supreme Being and His Holy Names, making offerings to God, and learning more about Him through scripture. Gradually, these activities will change our consciousness, and with this comes a change in our future course.
