Matthew 6 never tells you to stop worrying — it tells you worry has never once bought you an hour. Then it points at birds that have never fed themselves and a field that out-dresses Solomon, and it names the Hand behind both. A 1980s South African anthem for anyone who has lain awake doing math on a morning that hadn't come yet.
Lyrics
[Intro]
Oh — your Father knows
Oh — your Father knows
He knew before you woke
Oh — your Father knows
[Verse 1]
I have never added an hour to my life by being afraid
I have bought tomorrow twice
And never owned a single day
I have paid a debt I do not owe
To a man who isn't there
And I woke up in the morning
And the morning didn't care
[Chorus]
Oh — your Father knows
Oh — your Father knows
He knew before you woke
Oh — your Father knows
[Verse 2]
Look up — they neither plow nor sow
Nor reap a single field below
They store no grain, they hold no key
They're fed by One they cannot see
The morning breaks, the table's spread
They do not earn it — they are fed
He knows the sparrow when it falls
And knows your name above them all
[Chorus]
Oh — your Father knows
Oh — your Father knows
He knew before you woke
Oh — your Father knows
[Verse 3]
Look down — they neither toil nor spin
No thread without, no loom within
And Solomon upon his throne
Was never robed as these have grown
He cut the cloth of their attire
And in a week it turns to fire
If this is what the kindling wears
What will He hang on sons and heirs
[Chorus]
OH — YOUR FATHER KNOWS
OH — YOUR FATHER KNOWS
He knew before you woke
Oh — your Father knows
[Verse 4]
The bread I hoarded overnight
Was ruin by the morning light
He never pays a year ahead
He hands it down like daily bread
The trail was steep, the going tough
Not ease He gave me, but enough
I've spent the last of what I've got
I've come up empty — He has not
[Bridge]
Tomorrow's got its own trouble
Let tomorrow carry it
Tomorrow's got its own trouble
It was never mine to lift
I am given one day's bread
From a Hand I cannot see
No chance can know, no luck can aim.
The Hand that feeds me has a Name.
[Chorus]
OH — YOUR FATHER KNOWS
OH — YOUR FATHER KNOWS
He knew before you woke
OH — YOUR FATHER KNOWS
[Outro]
Sufficient for the day
Oh — your Father knows
Oh — your Father knows
Song Meaning
"Sufficient for the day is its own trouble."
— Matthew 6:34
There is an hour, somewhere between three and five in the morning, that belongs entirely to fear.
You wake up inside it. You do arithmetic on a day that has not arrived. You rehearse a conversation that may never happen, and you lose the argument every time. Then the sun comes up, and nothing you did in the dark has changed one thing about what is waiting.
Matthew 6 is about that hour.
What most people miss is that Jesus does not open with comfort. He opens with an audit. "Which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?" That is not a hug. That is a question built to leave a man holding nothing. Count it up — every night of it, every rehearsal, every worst case you built and furnished and lived in — and tell me what it bought you. Not one hour. Not one inch of ground.
Then He points at birds.
Not as poetry. As accounting. They do not plow. They do not harvest. They own no barn, no key, no single grain held back against the winter. And here is the line the whole song is built on: not one of them has ever fed itself. They are fed. Something happens to them every morning that they did not arrange and could not have arranged.
Then He points at flowers in a field nobody planted. A wildflower that will be oven fuel by the end of the week is dressed better than the richest king who ever sat on Israel's throne. Solomon had treasuries, tailors, and an empire, and he never once wore anything half as good as something that grew by itself and died in seven days. If that is what God does for kindling, what is He holding back for sons and heirs?
But this song will not promise you ease, because the passage doesn't.
It promises bread and clothing. It does not promise comfort, or surplus, or a road without the steep part in it. Faithful men have gone hungry. Faithful men have buried their own. What is promised is enough — and enough has a way of arriving that nobody can schedule and nobody can bank. Try to stockpile it and you will find what Israel found in the wilderness: whatever was kept overnight was ruined by morning. You are issued today. Tomorrow, you will be issued tomorrow.
And underneath all of it, the thing this song exists to say:
This is not luck. Luck cannot aim. This is not chance. Chance has no eyes, keeps no records, and has never known anybody's name. The hand that has fed you every day you have been alive belongs to a Person — and He knew what you needed before you were awake to ask Him for it.
So the answer to fear was never "stop being afraid." Nobody in the history of the world has managed that. The answer is to turn your whole face toward the Kingdom and go, and let the rest come in behind you.
Sufficient for the day.