These all look to You to give them their food in due season. When You give it to them, they gather it up. When You open Your hand, they are filled with good things. When You hide Your face, they are dismayed. When You take away their breath, they die and return to their dust. When You send forth Your Spirit, they are created and You renew the face of the ground.
(Verses 27-30)
We have some really big spiders who create quite extravagant webs among the trees of our neighborhood. Often the webs are spun over wide expanses from tree to tree. I have no idea how they do that--get from one tree to another without the web already existing. I know they can't fly. Caught in these webs are all manner of insects, large and small. Luscious lunch and dinner for the rotund arachnids waiting in the center of their home for the next unsuspecting bug. Food.
Unfortunately for some of the skunks who live in the wetlands nearby our home, cars still travel the streets at night when the black and whites go hunting. I saw one dead in the road with a group of hungry buzzards picking at it for lunch the other day. Munching on the remnants of the skunk's collision with a wheel. Food.
Hummingbirds fly freely from one blooming plant to another in our Southern California feasting haven. Happily filling their tiny bodies with the honeyed nectar. Coyotes hunt for rabbits in the brush in the flatlands. Rabbits eat the plants in the same plain. Plants drink the rain and peek out to see the sun as seedlings fresh born. Food.
And none of them is aware of where it comes from. They don't look up and say, "Thank you, God." They live until they die. They are then dust or a meal for something else. It is the cycle the Creator set in motion for all living things except man. We are supposed to be smarter than that. Imagined and made to know there is God and to understand it is He Who provides everything in due season. Raised up to understand God is good. And He gives good things from His open hand. Each time the Creator looked at what He'd brought forth, He said, "It is good." And set man over it all to rule and tend. Because we have the capacity to think like God. To understand the cycles of His care. And the heart to thank Him for the goodness of it all.
The first lie in the Garden of Eden was when the serpent questioned God's character, His goodness. Essentially, Satan said, "If God were good, He'd want you to be wise like He is. That's why He doesn't want you to eat from the tree in the midst of the garden. He's keeping the best thing from you." Provision--extravagant provision--was all around the man and woman. All they could see when the devil got through with them was the one thing they didn't have. The serpent didn't try to trick the spider, the wolf or the elephant. They didn't care. Mankind does. In accusing God, they sinned and lost the joy of living with the One Who made it all "good" for them to enjoy.
Plan A. All along. Send the Spirit so that mankind isn't only created to look like God, but also to have Him live within. Create in us a new heart. Provide for us a new birth into life that doesn't die when our bodies turn to dust. Walk again with mankind and take the beatings and the sneers of the enemy once more. Finish it forever. The accusation God isn't good. For He provides not only our food in due season, but our salvation forever. None of creation knows this secret but mankind. They go about spinning, soaring, hunting and scavenging unaware of the magnificence of the cycle. While the God of All, Whose heavens stretch past man's ever fully comprehending and Whose mind is infinite in imagination, knowledge and wisdom offers His open hand and heart to us.
"Look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?" Jesus
"Which one of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone instead? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father, Who is in heaven, give good things to those who as Him!" Jesus
(Verses 27-30)
We have some really big spiders who create quite extravagant webs among the trees of our neighborhood. Often the webs are spun over wide expanses from tree to tree. I have no idea how they do that--get from one tree to another without the web already existing. I know they can't fly. Caught in these webs are all manner of insects, large and small. Luscious lunch and dinner for the rotund arachnids waiting in the center of their home for the next unsuspecting bug. Food.
Unfortunately for some of the skunks who live in the wetlands nearby our home, cars still travel the streets at night when the black and whites go hunting. I saw one dead in the road with a group of hungry buzzards picking at it for lunch the other day. Munching on the remnants of the skunk's collision with a wheel. Food.
Hummingbirds fly freely from one blooming plant to another in our Southern California feasting haven. Happily filling their tiny bodies with the honeyed nectar. Coyotes hunt for rabbits in the brush in the flatlands. Rabbits eat the plants in the same plain. Plants drink the rain and peek out to see the sun as seedlings fresh born. Food.
And none of them is aware of where it comes from. They don't look up and say, "Thank you, God." They live until they die. They are then dust or a meal for something else. It is the cycle the Creator set in motion for all living things except man. We are supposed to be smarter than that. Imagined and made to know there is God and to understand it is He Who provides everything in due season. Raised up to understand God is good. And He gives good things from His open hand. Each time the Creator looked at what He'd brought forth, He said, "It is good." And set man over it all to rule and tend. Because we have the capacity to think like God. To understand the cycles of His care. And the heart to thank Him for the goodness of it all.
The first lie in the Garden of Eden was when the serpent questioned God's character, His goodness. Essentially, Satan said, "If God were good, He'd want you to be wise like He is. That's why He doesn't want you to eat from the tree in the midst of the garden. He's keeping the best thing from you." Provision--extravagant provision--was all around the man and woman. All they could see when the devil got through with them was the one thing they didn't have. The serpent didn't try to trick the spider, the wolf or the elephant. They didn't care. Mankind does. In accusing God, they sinned and lost the joy of living with the One Who made it all "good" for them to enjoy.
Plan A. All along. Send the Spirit so that mankind isn't only created to look like God, but also to have Him live within. Create in us a new heart. Provide for us a new birth into life that doesn't die when our bodies turn to dust. Walk again with mankind and take the beatings and the sneers of the enemy once more. Finish it forever. The accusation God isn't good. For He provides not only our food in due season, but our salvation forever. None of creation knows this secret but mankind. They go about spinning, soaring, hunting and scavenging unaware of the magnificence of the cycle. While the God of All, Whose heavens stretch past man's ever fully comprehending and Whose mind is infinite in imagination, knowledge and wisdom offers His open hand and heart to us.
"Look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?" Jesus
"Which one of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone instead? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father, Who is in heaven, give good things to those who as Him!" Jesus
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