One Lily At A Time

May 5, 2024 - Matthew 6: 25-34

I don’t know about you but sometimes opening my email inbox feels like drinking from a fire hose. There are some emails in there that are personal and written just to me. There are some emails in there that are written to a whole group of people but are about something pretty particular. Then there’s the advertisements and the spam and the too many things I’ve subscribed to ever read them all.

But sometimes the title or the preview of one of those too many things will catch my eye. One day, it was my subscription to the blog of Carrie Newcomer, the singer-songwriter, that caught my attention. Her words are always carefully crafted and often carry moving spiritual insights. But what most captured my attention on that particular day was her practice of taking photos that measure one inch by one inch. She includes these still every week with her words. They’re one of her ways of going slow. These photos of minute, square inch details of the world are her way of practicing living life aware of its holy preciousness.

Jesus teaches his disciples, “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.”

You are precious to God, I hear Jesus teaching in this passage. You are precious and so is all life. Just like those lilies in the field, you, too, are beautiful, loved, and cared for, if by no one else than most certainly by God.

How often do we live like that is true? Life can come at us fast, hard, and overwhelming. It can be easy to forget – to stop – to slow down – to come alive and to consider the lilies of the field and the holy way they grow.

I don’t know about you but I am a Grade A worrier from a long line of worriers. I have spent so many of my adult years trying to convince myself down to my bones that worrying about something will not actually stop it from happening. If it did, oh, what a superpower I would have.

So, when Jesus teaches his disciples, “‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear,” well, I have to tell you I feel as convicted as I do reassured.

I’d like to worry less and I probably worry less now than I used to. But it’s not just a matter of turning it off because I read this passage – at least not for me, I’m glad if that does it for you. No, for me, it takes practice to live with more trust than worry. For me, quite honestly, it takes a therapist. It takes a whole circle of friends. It takes figuring out what my body needs in terms of food, drink, and sleep. It takes what some of us call spiritual practices.

There’s a whole raft of ways of praying that I really dig but this week what seems to work for me is listening to as much music as possible.  I thought maybe I’d try on Carrie Newcomer’s one inch photo trick in preparation for this week’s sermon. But I never got around to it. You know who did? My husband, Parker. These are his photos you’re seeing today. It’s something that comes naturally to him, catching little details that hold a whole universe inside.

So, when I told him about this week’s sermon, he started coming back to me with these. These are the little details of his life,

–things that could be overlooked in the hustle and the bustle

–things that may otherwise be considered mundane.

But under his attention they reveal a world of beauty. Or maybe that’s just my biased eye, enamored with the view through his camera.

How many of you have heard the advice though that when we’re worried one of the best things we can do is come back to our physical senses and take in the details? What’s one thing you can see? What’s one thing you can hear? What’s one thing you can touch? What’s one thing you can smell? What’s one thing you can taste? If we ask ourselves these questions, sometimes they help us become more powerfully present to what’s really here in front of us now rather than all the worries that would carry us away.

The world is full of marvels like the lilies. We’ve just passed the annual point now where Elgin comes alive with miles of daffodils and whole terrains of tulips. They’re hard not to consider but there have been years when I’ve almost missed them completely. I just get caught up in the next thing and next thing and next thing. If I’m lucky, there’s usually a day when they catch my attention. But do you know what really works the best for me? If I can zero in on one single daffodil or tulip and just stare at it for a while. I probably look like I’ve lost my mind standing there but I don’t really care. That one flower focus changes everything for me. Then I can see them all more clearly. Then the whole world seems to shine more fully.

It’s a trick I use not just for beauty but for hard times, too. I can do this hard thing sometimes if it’s not a whole season of hard things at a time but one day, one moment, one breath at a time as we go. At the Creation Care Event here last week, Camp Emmaus Director Randall Westfall led a session and referenced the four stages of creation connection that he developed a decade ago. He recounted them to me over lunch on Sunday. He connects them to the eco-wheel or the four compass directions. 

The stages are:

East = Inspiration

South = Connection

West = Attunement

North = Communion

I connect them to the time I met a mouse in the woods. I had been sitting in the woods for hours, as a young hunter, waiting for my dad to come back from a drive, when I first noticed the little brown grey mouse scurrying through the leaves near me. I was inspired - I noticed its presence. Then I followed it with my eyes, watching wherever it went. I made a connection. Next, I waited to see what it would do. I kept as still as I possibly could. I became attuned. Finally, the most magical thing happened. The mouse began to circle me, getting closer and closer until it came right up and nibbled my big heavy boot with a scritch-scritch of its teeth and then ran away. I gasped. It was surely a moment of communion.

You might say to me, Pastor Katie, that’s a nice story, but where’s God in it? And I would turn to you and ask, my dear, where isn’t God in it? God is all around us. There is nowhere far away that we can be. But sometimes we forget that God is as close as our very breath. God is in the tulips and the daffodils and the lilies. God is in the mouse and the river and even in the people honking on the highway in their cars. If we like, we can practice remembering this, and when we do, I believe we will live with more trust and far less worry.

If we like, and Jesus suggests we will, we can practice living out his teaching to his disciples, “‘So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.”

Instead of trying to solve all our problems or even experience all the beauty at once or getting caught up only in the have-tos and the mundanes, I hear Jesus inviting us to practice taking things one day at a time. Maybe when we need to – practicing taking life one inch at a time, too.

We may find that God is in those little details just waiting to be found. We may find that going one day at a time - one inch at a time slow helps us move at what one of my mentor’s memorably called “the pace of what is real.”

Or as Carrie Newcomer sings,

“Come back come home

[come] gather the crumbs and the stones

Been traveling faster than my soul can go.”

Today, may you move only as fast as your soul can go.

And may you meet God in every inch.

May it be so. Amen.