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Therefore I tell you, don't be anxious for your life: what you will eat, or what you will drink; nor yet for your body, what you will wear. Isn't life more than food, and the body more than clothing? See the birds of the sky, that they don't sow, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns. Your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren't you of much more value than they? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They don't toil, neither do they spin, yet I tell you that even Solomon in all his glory was not dressed like one of these.
Consider the lilies
He does not say anxiety is a sin. He says it is unnecessary, and then he tells you to look at something: birds, lilies. The instruction is to observe, not to believe. Anxiety is a failure of attention: the mind rehearsing a future that does not exist instead of seeing the world that does.
Fasting is a school for this. Skip a meal and the body immediately generates alarm: what will you eat? And you discover, hour by hour, that the alarm was louder than the need. The lilies teach the same thing on a longer clock. You are held. You have always been held. The proof is that you are still here.
Practice
Go outside and look at one growing thing for five full minutes. Don't name it or photograph it. Just consider it.
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