Michael Jinkins's formative moments

I  remember a conversation my mother and I had one day after worship
in the small rural church in which I grew up and where she and my dad
are active members to this day. The preacher had preached on the passage
"Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof" (Matt. 6:34), a text that
in its evangelical simplicity and Elizabethan beauty was utterly
indecipherable for a small child. I knew it must be important. It was in
red in my Bible.

On the way to the car, I asked my mother what it
meant. "Hmmm, I guess it means that Jesus doesn't want us to worry
about the future," she said. "There's enough for us to worry about
today."

That was a lesson my mother, a child of the Great
Depression, knew by heart. She then invited me to read the passage with
her in the context of the whole text, and gradually the meaning came
into focus for me.