Daily Bible Reading 22nd September 2026 // Luke 12:22-34
22 And he said to his disciples, “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on. 23 For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. 24 Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! 25 And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? 26 If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest? 27 Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 28 But if God so clothes the grass, which is alive in the field today, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith! 29 And do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, nor be worried. 30 For all the nations of the world seek after these things, and your Father knows that you need them. 31 Instead, seek his kingdom, and these things will be added to you.
32 “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. 33 Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with money bags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. 34 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
'Take no thought' in 22 does not advocate an improvident attitude to life, and Jesus is not suggesting that we should be careless or decrying careful provision for the future. There is no thought here for the 'eat, drink and be merry' attitude with not a concern as to how the needful things of life are to be come by. The point is that we are to distinguish between proper, legitimate, necessary foresight and anxious worry and fretting about the future or about the many burdens and concerns of daily life. It is the latter, not the former, that is forbidden. The force of the reference to the birds of the air and the lilies of the field is not: they are cared for without toil, therefore we also will be cared for without toil, but: they are cared for without toil, therefore much more will we, as intelligent beings, who can work and toil, who have been given ability to do these things, and have the means whereby to work for our living. It is God Himself Who has instituted work as a means of grace: will He not much more bless this means of grace to us? - that is, honest toil will be blessed by God without our being worried or anxious about it. The 'therefore' in 22 is also important: it is on the basis of what He has already said that He now says these things - that is, He bases His appeal on the presupposition of a rightly ordered life, a life set in the context of an eternal dimension.