The Buzzing of a Fly By Octavius Winslow The God of Bethel

Look at that flower. It neither toils nor spins, and why? Because your Heavenly Father clothes it. Look at that bird, leaping from bough to bough, springing from hill to valley, sparkling with beauty, gushing with song, and wild with ecstatic delight. It has not a thought or care of its own. And why? Because God thinks and cares for it.

O you of little faith, why do you hesitate to trust all your personal interests, to confide all your worldly affairs, to disclose all your temporal needs and sorrows in prayer to God? He is not too high for your lowest need, nor too great for your smallest care.

If the buzzing of a fly troubles me, says John Newton, I may take it to God. This is not mere sentiment. It is the practical embodiment of a principle of experimental religion most honoring to God and sanctifying to us. The principle of faith, which acknowledges God in all our ways, sees God in everything and takes everything, the smallest, to God.

Look at the birds of the air, they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labour or spin, yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendour was dressed like one of these.

If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and to-morrow is thrown into the fire, will He not much more clothe you, O 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.