Walking With Christ

(Part 3 of 9)

Matthew 6:26  Look at the birds of the air:  they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.  Are you not of more value than they?(ESV)

When was the last time you actually looked at a bird?

Not noticed one.  Looked at one.  Jesus taught people to pay attention to things they’d probably seen thousands of times.

Birds.  Flowers.  Seeds.  Fields.  Coins.  Children.

A fig tree.

He could take something ordinary and make it carry a lesson.

When Jesus told people not to be consumed by worry, He didn’t begin with a complicated argument.  He told them to look around.  Look at the birds.  They aren’t planting fields, harvesting crops, or filling barns, yet they’re fed.

Then He pointed somewhere else.  Consider the lilies.

They don’t work to make themselves beautiful, yet their beauty exceeds the clothing of kings.

The lesson was already sitting in front of them.  They simply hadn’t been looking at it that way.

Sometimes teaching isn’t about giving someone new information.  Sometimes it’s about helping them see what’s been there all along.

Jesus used the familiar to reveal the overlooked.  The birds had been flying before He mentioned them.  The flowers had been growing before He pointed toward them.

What changed wasn’t the thing being observed.  What changed was the way the listener saw it.

There are lessons around us every day that we may never notice until someone says, “Look.”

How Jesus taught:  He used what people could see.