“Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth! Serve the LORD with gladness! Come into His presence with singing! Know that the LORD, He is God! It is He who made us, and we are His; we are His people, and the sheep of His pasture. Enter His gates with thanksgiving, and His courts with praise! Give thanks to Him; bless His name! For the LORD is good; His steadfast love endures forever, and His faithfulness to all generations.” Psalm 100:1-5
Devotional Thought For The Day
There is a tendency today to separate out our faith, our relationship with God, and our inner “spirituality” from “the earth” and the concrete, tangible things of creation. Part of this comes from the influence of the theory of evolution, and a good bit of it from our “empirical” way of experiencing nature. One has to look carefully, and have time to think deeply, to recognize the hand of God in this fallen world of sin – and there is never direct empirical experience of the essence of God. Perhaps this too is an impediment, the fact that nature also struggles under the curse God imposed in consequence of the original sin of Adam and Eve. Nature is not 100 percent hospitable, not completely in perfect balance; it is hard to reconcile God’s power and love and His control over all things with some of the natural catastrophes and disasters that occur, or with some of the brutal and ruthless aspects of the natural world. With the movement from a rural population to an urban population, from the farm to the office, from producing one’s own food from the ground to purchasing everything from the grocery store, many people are really out of touch with God’s world, and don’t really think of God as having anything to do with the messy and dirty things of this place we live in.
From this disconnect flows the thinking that God really didn’t “make” us, that we were merely reproduced like every other living thing. Such thinking skews reality and makes difficult a proper relationship with God. It makes us think of ourselves as independent, free agents in relationship to God, with the right to either have a relationship with Him or not, to honor Him or not, to reject Him and spend our time on our projects rather than “wasting” our time thinking about Him and the deeper and higher aspects of human being. Without knowledge and awareness that God made us, that we are His, His people and sheep of His pasture, there is no natural or logical compulsion to serve Him, praise Him, give Him thanksgiving, or bless His Name. We might pay some deference to God, but we have “miniaturized” Him and denuded Him of much of His prerogatives. Elsewhere the psalmist calls this great foolishness [Ps. 53:1] and it surely hinders a proper relationship with God. It also diminishes human being and dignity, and essentially turns us into mere animals whose existence and fate is little different than that of cattle or insects. Obviously, this is not what God intended when He created mankind in a very special and intimate way and gave him dominion over all of His creation.
Understanding how our education and conditioning in this recent “slice” of human history has skewed and diminished our respect for God calls for repentance and humbling. The good news is that God is not small-hearted or hard-hearted like we are. Rather “the LORD is good; His steadfast love endures forever, and His faithfulness to all generations.” He has demonstrated this commitment to us in the gift of His Son as our Redeemer and Savior, in the cleansing atonement He made for us on the cross. In spite of our sin He is reconciled to us in Christ Jesus, and urges us to be reconciled to Him – now and forever. It is rather remarkable that God would do this for us, would continue to love us when we have so little love and respect for Him. But God is love, and while we cannot imagine the pain that our perversion causes Him, He remains faithful in love and commitment to us. It is this great love that calls us to look again at the realities, to reconsider our relationship with God, Who He is and what He has done for us – not only in our redemption but also in our creation. It enables us to look more deeply at God’s love for us, displayed in our place and our preservation in life upon His earth.
It is God’s intent that we live in His created world and enjoy it, rather than walling ourselves in and insulating ourselves from nature. As we begin another spring season we can take opportunity to feel and smell a handful of dirt, to marvel at the beauty of flowers, to take in the majesty of a rainstorm, and to praise God with joyful thanksgiving – knowing that we are His people, now and forever. We were not created to avoid nature but to work in nature and to have dominion over it – for our own benefit and for the benefit of God’s creation. For one who knows God’s goodness and love in Christ Jesus, nature also bears powerful witness to God’s goodness and love. May we learn to embrace His goodness with greater clarity and awareness, and bless His Name.
Prayer For The Day
Dear Lord Jesus, forgive me for the skewed perceptions of my darkened sinful nature, distortions that have been encouraged in many ways by the “world” around me, and which I have allowed to infect my thinking. May Your Spirit enlighten me through Your Word, so that I be restored to profound and simple awe of Your great love – both in what You have done for me on the cross, and all that You do, will, and intend for me in my daily life here and now. I am one of Your people, a sheep of Your pasture, and I give You thanks and praise, and bless Your holy Name. Amen.