Jesus once told His followers to consider the lilies.
I’ve read those words before.
But lately, I’ve been wondering what it actually means to consider something.
Not glance at it.
Not admire it.
Consider it.
Look closely.
Pay attention.
So I did.
And the thing that struck me wasn’t simply that the lilies are beautiful.
It’s how little of their growing they actually control.
They don’t manufacture their own beauty.
They don’t control the rain.
They don’t command the sun.
They don’t determine the season in which they bloom.
And still…
they grow.
Jesus says,
“Look at them.”
I wonder if I’ve spent too much of my life believing that if something matters to me, I should somehow be able to control how it turns out.
So I plan.
I prepare.
I work.
I try to anticipate what comes next.
None of those things are necessarily wrong.
But somewhere along the way, responsibility can quietly become control.
Even growth can become something we anxiously measure.
Am I doing enough?
Am I far enough along?
Am I becoming who I’m supposed to become?
And then there are the lilies.
They remind me that there are things God has asked me to tend…
and things He never asked me to control.
There are things that belong to me.
Showing up.
Being faithful.
Caring well for what God has placed in my hands.
And there are things that don’t.
The timing.
The outcome.
The rain.
The season.
Maybe wisdom is learning the difference.
Maybe considering the lilies isn’t an invitation to care less about our lives.
Maybe it’s an invitation to stop believing everything depends on us.
Jesus didn’t tell us to become lilies.
He simply told us to consider them.
Maybe because creation remembers something we so easily forget:
God is responsible for things I was never meant to carry.
So today…
I’m considering the lilies.
And trusting God with the growing.
“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin.”
— Matthew 6:28 (NIV)
