Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Matthew 633 most of us in America aren't worried about what we will eat or wear. For most of us, it's more a matter of which outfit to wear today or whether to eat pasta or grill a burger, because we have plenty of things from which to choose in both the closet and the pantry. But even if we're not worried about food or clothing, there are plenty of other things that we do worry about, like having enough money to pay the rent or how the kids are doing in school, or what the EKG is going to show this time, or whether or not we'll be living under a bridge when we retire. If we prayed about every little thing we worry about, we wouldn't have time to do anything else all day long. That isn't any way to live, and that is not the way the Lord wants us to live. If we were to paraphrase what Jesus is saying in this passage, it might come out something like, don't worry about things you can't control. Just focus on the things of God. Because when you do, everything else will fall into place. In fact, we could actually read the verse that way. Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and everything else will fall into its proper place. Think for a minute about working a crossword puzzle. They say that doing crossword puzzles helps keep your mind young. If youre under 30, you might not care less about that. But keeping the brain sharp becomes a lot more important to those who are smart enough to know theyre already fighting a losing battle with their bodies. So, hey, if we can keep at least part of us from getting old too quickly, why not right now? When doing a crossword, if you can figure out just one letter of a word, may well figure out the entire word. And if you can get just one word figured out, you may have found the key that unlocks a whole bunch of other words connected to it. That's what Jesus was getting at. There are way too many things we just can't figure out in life. Instead of worrying about all that, let's just focus on the things of God and let him handle all the stuff we can't control ourselves. There's no point in wearing ourselves out by worrying about things we can do nothing about. Just keep your mind on him and his word and let him take care of the rest. When we do that, everything else will fall into place.

Music this has been your thought for the day with Steve Burkham pastor of Community Christian Church in Stockton, California. If you have questions or comments for Pastor Steve, please send them to dailythoughtspodcastmail.com dot. Have a great day and we hope you'll join us tomorrow as Pastor Steve opens God's word to bring us another thought for the day.