"The raven is a creature of need, of want, of desire. It is voracious. And God feeds it, takes care of its needs, so Jesus would have us believe. Jesus tells us to consider this bird to help relieve ourselves of our anxiety about life, about food, about clothing and money. Don't be anxious. Consider the raven: the complex, paradoxical, voracious little embodiment of life. Consider the ravens.
"They are friends with wolves. They are acrobats. They dance. The book of Job suggests that it is God that feeds their young when they cry, thus they have often been accused of being bad mothers. Could there be anything more shameful? They are scavengers. They are ravenous. They rave. They mix — when mixing is not allowed. They are creatures of paradox and God feeds them. Jesus says, don't be anxious, consider the raven — the raven is not unburdened by the weight of the world (perhaps its brain is too big), it carries it around on its big black wings. You can see the dark in its eyes. And God feeds it.
"It's one thing to believe God feeds the little pretty birds of the air. They have small appetites. They need a few seeds. Everybody loves them. It's not that much to feed. They do not seem needy. But what if you're ravenous?
"Is the hope that God will feed you as long as you're not that hungry, as long as you don't need that much? God will feed you, sure — if you have the appetite of a little dove, as long as all you need is seeds, dry little seeds? The hope is not so proscribed.
"God feeds the ravens, the ravenous, the mixed up greedy glutton carrion eater. That's saying a lot more, somehow — something more shocking, maybe, than that God's willing to give bird food to light eaters. And how much more will God feed us? We need a lot. A lot of food and attention and love and healing. The world needs a lot. And I don't think I usually believe that God will feed us all. Jesus seems crazy here to me, unreliable, like how can we even listen to him here? How can we model ourselves on the raven, the lilies — it's lunacy to ask us to believe we will be fed.
"What if we could trust that we will be fed? Maybe that's the most important thing we could ever know. And somehow if we knew it, a lot more people would get fed and a lot less people would be left hopeless in the wake of our schemes and dramas and deceits. What if God feeds our children in some way we're not capable of, even when we fail them? What if we could trust God? To not let even the raven go, much less the world?"
