Look to the lilies

It had come upon me, gradually, but with increasing force (and attendant anxiety), that I won't have a job next year. And so for the last few weeks, I've been worrying about money. It isn't so much that I want a tremendous amount, I say, but just enough to pay the rent and food, and have a little left over for emergencies. And of course, it isn't about the money itself, but avoiding the sense of shame that would wash over me, were the end of month to arrive, and I couldn't amass enough to pay rent.

So it floored me when I read the following confession from CS Lewis:

I'm a panic-y person about money myself (which is a most shameful confession and a thing dead against Our Lord's words) and poverty frightens me more than anything else except large spiders and the tops of cliffs: one is sometimes even tempted to say that if God wanted us to live like the lilies of the field He might have given us an organism more like theirs!

These seem fairly incongruous statements, until you realise that the man who said those words also gave two-thirds of his income away, and even then was not satisfied with the extent of his charities.

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And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
- Jesus.