Monday, 1 December, 2003

This series of devotions are focused around Soren Kierkegaard’s “Christian Discourses etc.” The biblical text to consider during these devotions is: Matthew 6:24-34.



Kierkegaard has just written about the place of the birds of the air and the lilies of the field as assistant teachers of the Gospel.

How is this possible? Well, really, the thing is not so difficult. For the fact is that neither the lilies nor the birds are “heathen,” but neither are the lilies or the birds “Christians,” and just for this reason they could be especially helpful by way of giving instruction in Christianity. Consider the lilies and the birds, and then thou dost discover how the heathen live, for it is precisely not like the lilies and the birds that they live; if thou dost live like the lilies and the birds, thou art a Christian – which the lilies and birds neither are nor can become.



I have always found that Kierkegaard takes his readers on a unique trip and we need to be ready to see things in a way we may never have considered. In these days of the season of Advent – the weeks prior to the incarnation of our Lord – it will be especially good for us to contemplate the gift of the Good News within an over anxious world. Jesus used lilies and birds to open up the vitality that is at the center of our lives as followers of Jesus. It is not spelled out like a list of things to do and not do. Rather it is something for us to “consider”…as in considering what it is to live each day as though we trust the one who promises to give us life.



Connection: We live in a culture and society of great abundance and yet we seem to always want more and call for it with a voice that says we “must” have it. Like “Christmas” shoppers who seem to go mad with the desire to consume more and more, it may do us well today to consider what is needed and to thank God for every bit of life that is before us.



Creator of the many blessings within this day, you shower us with enough to make our lives full with opportunities to serve others and share our abundance. We give you thanks for the gifts you place before us and the call to consider the welfare of more than ourselves. Amen.