“Look at the birds. They don’t plant or harvest or store food in barns, for your heavenly Father feeds them. And aren’t you far more valuable to him than they are? Can all your worries add a single moment to your life?”  – Matthew 6:26-27

There’s a dog over there, running with abandon up and down the empty lot in the middle of the city. Now he’s lounging at the base of a telephone pole. A few minutes later he’s running at breakneck speed from one end to the other.

Where are all your cares? Where will your next meal come from? Where will you sleep tonight? What of the dangers that lurk around every dark corner? You could get hit by a car!

There you sit staring off into the sky as a storm approaches – what a life.

Here I sit trapped in my cage worried about every single slight and a future that may never materialize. Eaten up with bitterness and overflowing with anger. Worries follow my every step. I’m laughing in public and wailing in private.

I’m the one living the life of a beast – untamed feelings driven more wild by this civilization all around me.

*I wrote this in 2011 looking out the window of the little cage I had just been consigned to occupy. I noticed this stray dog one day and it hit me that it was me who was becoming a wild beast.

Faith takes practice.

“Our life is what our thoughts make it.” – Marcus Aurelius