Biblion Bible Commentary
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Consider the Ravens
Luke 12:22-34
22 He said to his disciples, “Therefore I tell you, don’t be anxious for your life, what you will eat, nor yet for your body, what you will wear. · WEB
Anxiety answered by birds and flowers — and then an instruction to sell what you have.
"Don't be anxious for your life, what you will eat, nor yet for your body, what you will wear" Luke 12:22.
The teaching is given in Matthew's account Matthew 6:25–34. It follows the rich fool here, and the sequence is the point: a parable about a man with too much, then a word to people with too little. Both conditions produce the same preoccupation.
"Consider the ravens: they don't sow, they don't reap, they have no warehouse or barn, and God feeds them" Luke 12:24.
The other telling says birds. This one names ravens, and the choice is pointed. Ravens were unclean under the law Leviticus 11:15, they are scavengers, and they were the standing example of a bird that does not care for its own — Scripture asks who provides for the young ravens when they cry Job 38:41 Psalms 147:9. God feeds the birds nobody would feed.
And no warehouse or barn has just been said about a man who built one.
"Which of you by being anxious can add a cubit to his height?" Luke 12:25. The argument is practical: worry has never once produced the thing worried about. "If then you aren't able to do even the least things, why are you anxious about the rest?" Luke 12:26.
"Consider the lilies, how they grow. They don't toil, neither do they spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these" Luke 12:27. The comparison is with the richest man in the nation's memory, and the flower wins without effort. What is being described is not laziness but a different source of provision.
"Don't seek what you will eat or what you will drink; neither be anxious. For the nations of the world seek after all of these things, but your Father knows that you need these things" Luke 12:29–30. The word for anxious here carries the sense of being suspended, kept in the air. Anxiety is described as a condition of not being set down anywhere.
"Don't be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the Kingdom" Luke 12:32.
This sentence is this Gospel's own and it is one of the tenderest in Scripture. Little flock concedes the smallness that is producing the fear. And the reason given against fear is not that the flock is stronger than it looks; it is that the Father intends to give them a kingdom, and a man who is being left an estate does not lie awake over the grocery bill. Good pleasure means it is not reluctant.
"Sell what you have and give gifts to the needy" Luke 12:33.
The conclusion is this account's, and it is startling after so much comfort. Freedom from anxiety is not offered as a mood to be cultivated; it is put into practice by disposing of the thing being clung to. The other telling says lay up treasure in heaven; this one says how.
"Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also" Luke 12:34. And the order in that sentence is worth noticing. The heart follows the treasure, not the other way round — which means moving the money is a way of moving the heart, rather than something to be attempted after the heart has changed.
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