PSALM 105 - Dreams And A Dead End

When He summoned a famine on the land and broke all supply of bread, He had sent a man ahead of them, Joseph, who was sold as a slave. His feet were hurt with fetters. His neck was put in a collar of iron. Until what He said came to pass, the word of the Lord tested Him. The king sent and released him. The ruler of the peoples set him free. He made him lord of his house and ruler of all his possessions, to bind his princes at his pleasure and to teach his elders wisdom.  (Verses 16-22)

 Though his father had twelve sons, Joseph was the favorite. Jacob's wife, Rachel, was barren until, when it was almost too late, Joseph filled her vacant womb. The boy was young when his brothers were old enough to go out into the fields to work. He was at home and spoiled, even, as the apple of his father's eye. Joseph pranced about in a brightly-colored tunic specially made for him by his dad. Prone to tattling, the young boy found himself in trouble with the older boys who already hated the fact he was so favored. Then there were the dreams.

"Hey, you guys, you know what I dreamed last night?" Joseph to his brothers.

"Here he goes again," said Reuben to the others. "What this time, Joseph?"

"We were all out in the fields binding wheat when my sheaf stood and rose upright. Then, I looked, and all of your sheaves bowed down to mine!" Joseph is smiling. Loves the dreams. "Isn't that wild?"

"You think you will rule and reign over us, boy?" It made the boys furious. Little pipsqueak.

At breakfast on a day not much later, Joseph tells the family another of his dreams. "The sun, the moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to me."

This was even too much for Jacob! "What! You think your mother and I along with all your brothers are going to bow to you?" Wonder what that means. Pondered it because he kind of believed in those dreams his kid had.

When he was seventeen, his brothers had enough and threw him into an empty well. Thinking they might kill him. Instead packed him up in a caravan going to Egypt where he was sold to Potiphar, an officer of the Pharaoh. Many of the years in Egypt, Joseph was in prison for the rape of Potiphar's wife. Innocent of the charges, he languished there. It was his ability to dream that ultimately got him released and placed in the house of the Pharaoh. So trusted and loved was Joseph that he was put in charge of everything except the throne. And the sheaf stood up.

I have often thought about what must have gone on in the mind of Joseph from the days of the pit to the time of the throne. Wasted years in prison for no reason. Thwarted attempts to be freed even though he interpreted dreams for those who then forgot him. He must have cried out to his God, "What am I doing here?" It was unfair. Though he could've accused God when he accused his brothers, he didn't. Joseph kept his integrity, even sexually. He ran from Potiphar's wife rather than sin against his God and her husband. How can we do all the right things and still find ourselves in such a mess?

It turns out God was in the middle of the mess all along. What looked like a dead end, failure to the max, losing family, dignity and purpose, was really God's highway to fame. The plan involved the testing of Joseph's metal, but it wasn't the point of it. The apex of the plan was God saving His nation, Israel, from famine. He sent Joseph on ahead. Wove his life through the pathways leading to his destiny. Ignoble at first, pride in a multi-colored robe left in Canaan. The gift given by the Holy Spirit was, however, irrevocable and necessary to Joseph's greater story. In fact, so prominent was his ability to interpret dreams, even the worldly Pharaoh said, "Can we find a man like this, in whom is the Spirit of God?" The very gifting that caused such jealousy in the ones who should've recognized it as God-given, was embraced by a heathen king. For God's purposes.

Famine brought the family of Jacob to Egypt looking for a hand-out. And the sheaves bowed down. The dream wasn't the fantasy of a little kid. It was the message of a prescient God. A foreshadowing that one day they'd need a savior. And He'd provide one. In fact, was thinking about their future long before their bellies ached with hunger and their mouths dried up with thirst. Ever wonder if God cares about what's happening to you right now? Ever think it's so unfair that life has taken such a turn? Trust. Like Joseph did, that finally there will be a day when your journey is more clear, your path more direct. And know your Father, Who loves you with a steadfast love, has worked out your destiny before you each step of the way. 

PSALM 105 - Warts And All

When they were few in number and of little account, and sojourners in it (the land), wandering from nation to nation, from one kingdom to another people, He allowed no one to oppress them. He rebuked kings on their account, saying, "Touch not my anointed ones, do my prophets no harm." (Verses 12-15)

Sarai was gorgeous. Abram's half-sister...and wife. A famine in their own land forced them into Egypt. Knowing that Sarai's beauty would captivate all her saw her, Abram told her to lie. Say she is his sister, not his wife, if any should ask. His fear? They would kill him to keep her. The princes of Pharaoh did see Abram's wife and praised her beauty to the Pharaoh, who took her into his harem. The Egyptian ruler paid Abram well for his "sister." Sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male servants, female servants, female donkeys and camels. So Abram kept his mouth shut. An iffy husband, at best. Only thing is, a great plague came with her. From the day she entered his courts, Pharaoh had nothing but trouble. Too sick to care about taking her as a wife. Sarai was safe. For the time being.

"What have you done to us?" cried Pharaoh when the vomiting and nausea let up a little. "Why did you lie and say this woman was your sister?" Sarai was standing there beside the mighty ruler, looking lovely. Glad to see her man come to get her. "Take her! Get out!" And Pharaoh let him keep the farm he'd given to Abram. Now a rich man.

That was the first time Abram played that game. The second was with Abimelech, king of Gerar. God had renamed Abram, Abraham. Sarai was now Sarah. Both names mean princess. Hmmm. Abram meant exalted father. But Abraham, father of a multitude. And Sarah, the princess, was barren. What a soap opera of "little account" people. Lying the same lies. Caught in the same circumstances. Their God always having to redeem their messes. Abimelech couldn't sleep. "You're a dead man!" said God to him in a dream.

"What?!" The king is nonplussed. "What have I done?"

"You've taken another man's wife!" God judged.

"I haven't approached her! She's just like she came to me! Please don't kill me and innocent people!" Abimelech is sweating in the dream. "I didn't know! I took her with integrity of heart. He lied!"

"I know, Abimelech," replied a softened God in the dream. "I am the One Who didn't let you touch her. But if you don't return her to her husband, you will surely die!"

End of dream
.
As God promised his anointed prophet would do, Abraham prayed for Abimelech. God had made the king's entire house barren because of Sarah. Their wombs were opened when Abraham prayed. Oh, the irony.

Then Abraham, father of multitudes, takes his princess wife and drives before him all the sheep and oxen and servants the king gave him to appease the God Who scared him to death. In his tunic pocket jingle a thousand pieces of silver given to him by Abimelech as a sign he didn't touch Sarah sexually. Abraham and his own barren wife then traveled on. It would be years before Isaac, their boy "laughter" is born. Sarah no longer turning heads. Abraham too old to care. What in the world was God doing?

Choosing, I think. Certainly the God of Abraham didn't covenant with him because of the man's stellar integrity. It was after the Pharaoh's near miss that the God of the Universe made covenant promises of future multitudes coming from the loins of Abram. God decided this was the man. Struck a blood soaked oath with him, initiated by His own choosing. "You will be a great nation." And his Sarai barren. "But not yet." In the interim, God used the goods of the world to enrich the man and woman. Used their plotting and lying, even, to bring them into His promises. God the protector of the ones He chose to love. God knowing where their wanderings would take them. Saw something in Abraham and Sarah others couldn't. They'd believe. And when they didn't? He moved their destinies along anyway. Making kings and princes bend to what He wanted.

Are you worried today that He won't come through for you? Do you think He's incapable these days of interfacing with the problems of your life? Our God has chosen us as surely as He chose the father of multitudes and His little princess. He's made covenant with us, the new covenant in His blood, to abide in and with us through everything. Including the stuff we do that's not so pretty. Abraham and Sarai should give us courage to believe that we can be far from perfect, though we shouldn't strive for that, and still have God fight with us through this life. He's at work in me and for me. Despite me. He can open the barren womb of a ninety year old woman and bring forth a child aptly named Laughter. God still can raise the dead, heal the sick, provide for our needs and rescue us from the pit. All because He chooses to love us "little account" ones who sojourn on Earth. God knows what He has planned for our lives. Where we fit in. How to use even our mistakes to move us forward. Life is messy. It got messier even for Abraham, the father of our faith. But in the midst of our personal chaos is a God committed to us by covenant love. Warts and all.

So then it depends not on man's willing or man's running, but on God.  Romans 9
 

PSALM 105 - Feeling Like a Balloon Filled With Helium

Oh, give thanks to the Lord! Call upon His name. Make known His deeds among the peoples! Sing to Him, sing praises to Him. Tell of all His wondrous works! Glory in His holy name. Let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice! Seek the Lord and His strength. Seek His presence continually! Remember the wondrous works that He has done, His miracles and the judgments He uttered, O offspring of Abraham, His servant, children of Jacob, His chosen ones!
He is the Lord our God. His judgments are in all the earth. He remembers His covenant forever, the word that He commanded for a thousand generations, the covenant that He made with Abraham, His sworn promise to Isaac as an everlasting covenant, saying, "To you I will give the land of Canaan as your portion for an inheritance." (Verses 1-11)

But this is the new covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: "I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God and they will be my people. And no longer will each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,' for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest," declares the Lord. "For I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more." Jeremiah 31

I participated in the Philadelphia Harvest Crusade via satellite at my church on Saturday evening. Greg Laurie preached a stirring sermon that called many forward to ask Jesus into their hearts. They came in a steady stream from the many tiers of the auditorium and stood before Greg's podium as music played and singers sang and Jesus walked among them. As surely as He did when we could touch His flesh and brush against His clothing. Young men with tears spilling from their blue eyes. Young women with their hankies to their faces. And it all came flooding back to me. The catch in my chest. The need to cry almost choking me to death. Not knowing exactly what was going on, but understanding somewhere in the deepest part of me that I would never be the same.

 I was six years old. The preacher in our Baptist church asked us to come forward if we wanted Jesus in our hearts. I did. More than anything. I still do. More than anything. I knew Jesus died for me. Sunday after Sunday, as Baptist preachers tend to do, the sermons reminded me Jesus took my place. Not a rampant sinner at six, yet I knew I loved this Jesus. And He was pounding on the door to my heart (Revelation 3), not knocking quietly. In my crying, I gave away the old Kay...not very old, I know, but nevertheless needy...sobbed her straight out of me. Because, when I repeated the prayer of faith after my preacher, Someone Else took her place. And filled me like a balloon is filled with helium. My soul felt fat and light--wanted to soar above the pews and shout "Glory!" Only I didn't even know to shout such a thing then. I felt giggly. Like it was my birthday. Then for a whole week, all I wanted to do was die and go to heaven. Sincerely. But that's another story that needlessly worried my parents.

I need to remember that day more often. The wondrous work God did in my heart. That day He made a covenant with me. A covenant sealed with the blood of His Son. God means it. Forever. I belong to him for a thousand thousands of years and more. Never will He leave. Never has He. Never will He forsake me. Never has He. Jesus will stand before God, the Father, one day and, with His hands on my shoulders, He'll say, "This one's ours, You know. Kay belongs to us." Oh, my heart gives thanks! I want to tell the world about this Savior Who saw a little girl who'd need Him so. Who loved a little kid in the same measure He loves big people. My God wanted to dwell in my nascent soul--to grow me up in Him. So you don't have to ask me why I'd continually seek His presence or sing a love song to Jesus at the top of my voice. I am loved! I can walk right into God's presence. I can feel Him living in me. What does a person do without God Himself living in her heart? What fills that place? Oh, I know. I know. It's empty. A vacuum seeking everything and finding nothing. I barely remember it. Though I've taken my Savior to places I regret with all my heart, and though the place in me became almost incomprehensibly small, Jesus was still there. And I was still His. Life without Him must be so vastly hopeless. Yet God knows even those of us who don't know Him. Desires to take up residence in our lives--our actual bodies--and turn us into who He created us to be. That is quite an offer considering the misery without Him. Don't you think?

I am now sixty-five. For almost sixty years I've known Jesus. I haven't acted like it some of that time. And if His covenant with me weren't something God swore to me, we'd be done. I didn't keep my part of the bargain too many times to count. I broke covenant. God never has. On that December day of my sixth year, Jesus made me His forever. He's determined to finish in me what He started. Growing me up into heaven. Determined with all His strength to forgive my foolishness and willfulness. His covenant with me sealed with the blood from His palms and side. No. Jesus paid too big a price for my life to let me be. And rather than irk me, it makes me crazy in love with Him! Who would do that? Really? Love me that much? Live in the slums of my heart so He can eventually make a place in me fit for a King? Oh, Father, I do remember the wondrous work You've done! And now I know to say, "Glory!"

PSALM 104 - How Clean Is Your House?

Let the glory of the Lord endure forever. Let the Lord be glad in His works. He looks at the earth and it trembles. He touches the mountains and they smoke. I will sing to the Lord as long as I live. I will sing praise to my God while I have my being. Let my meditation be pleasing to Him. As for me, I shall be glad in the Lord. Let sinners be consumed from the earth, and let the wicked be no more. Bless the Lord, Oh my soul. Praise the Lord!  (Verses 31-35)

Arab. Pleasing. A primitive root: to braid, a pledge given in exchange for delivery of material goods. It implies sharing or association on a meaningful level. "Let my meditation braid me with God, as a pledge of my obedience to Him and His watch care over me."

During my morning devotional and prayers one morning, the sun came suddenly streaming through  one of the windows in my home. I know the light was caused by the day opening up more fully, but the drenching of my face in the warmth of the new day did something also to my heart. My meditation was on purity of heart and soul. My yearning to be cleansed--clean. And as if orchestrated by the lighting director of a Broadway play, this ray of golden hope struck my face as I was praying for my God to light the darkened places in my life. Then I saw a picture. In my spirit I traveled with God to my soul. The center of me. The light had traveled there also, showing cobwebs and doors ajar, behind which still hid deceits, hurts or ignominious thoughts. What I knew in an instant was the light longed to shine into all of me. To sweep down the walls, vacuum up the crumbs of fear and doubt, to swing open the hesitant doors still obscuring sin and make me shine clean for the presence of the Lord Who dwells in me. To give the Holy Spirit a spotless living quarters. A holy tabernacle.

I thought of that morning this morning as I read these verses. Our meditations braid us into God. Bond us with Him because our God meets us there. Our sin for His righteousness. Our worries for His power. Our death for His life. A holy pledge to us that our devotion to our God is reciprocated with His pleasure. Not pleased because we become obsequious slaves! No! Pleased because we seek Him out in order to know Him. God isn't different from us in that respect. Made in His image, I would argue that we are much like Him in that respect. God loves us! We need to soak in that knowledge a bit. The One Who can strike a mountain and make it smoke or just look at the earth and make it tremble, gently listens as I speak to Him. All-Power stoops to hear my stuff.

But, like all parents, my Father wants a clean room. Things put in order. After all, my Father lives in my home. By the Holy Spirit, I am a tent of God--a little tabernacle of the Holy of Holies. If God had come into my life and tried to clean me up all at once, I wouldn't have survived the house keeping. Too much in disarray. Too unkempt and untidy to throw it all out at once. So great is my Father's patience with the slums in which He took up residence that He makes rearranging my interior a process I can handle. We work together and in so doing become braided in trust, hope, faith, love and joy. I want an ever brighter home for my God. Sparkling, shiny, large and comfortable for the Holy Spirit to dwell there. So that my God knows this tabernacle is a sanctuary filled with light, transparent not only to Him but to all I meet. For my God to be glad as He sits in the easy chair of my soul as we talk of everything all day is my highest goal. To please Him with the intentions of my heart and the purity of my soul is still a work in progress. But I am glad of the process. Hopeful of the outcome. And intent on getting this house spotless.

PSALM 104 - Oblivious as a Dead Skunk?

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

PSALM 104 - Big Mommas With Their Kids

He made the moon to mark the seasons. The sun knows its time for setting. You make darkness, and it is night, when all the beasts of the forest creep about. The young lions roar for their prey, seeking food from their God. When the sun rises, they steal away and lie down in their dens. Man goes out to his work and to his labor until the evening. O Lord, how manifold are Your works! In wisdom You have made them all. The earth is full of Your creatures. Here is the sea, great and wide, which teems with creatures innumerable, living things both great and small. There go the ships and Leviathan, which You formed to play in it.  (Verses 19-26)

In March of 2003, Bill and I traveled to the tip of Baja California, Mexico, to go whale watching. There is nothing there but sand and a little brush. The whale watching adventure was a "green" expedition, so everything had to be environmentally safe, including toilets and showers. They used the word shower loosely. We had what looked like enema bags filled with water. These were set in the sun early in the morning in order to gather enough heat from the sun to produce water warm enough to get us sufficiently wet to wash our hair and suds our bodies. If we ran out, we ran out. But, I digress. It had been a dream of mine to go out in the small motor boat and fellowship with Leviathan for years. In March, the mother gray whales appear with their calves and some whale lovemaking also is in order. We were told that many of the mothers had themselves been babies when boats such as ours cruised into the waters with spectators reaching out their hands or setting up their cameras for a moment of connection with these giant sea mammals. Thus, the speculation the mommies were unafraid to push their spawn close to the boat for a bit of human babysitting while they swam free in the waters around us.

Our first trip out was in the morning. "We don't see whales on each of our forays," explained the captain of our eight-man motor boat. "Hopefully we will today." My heart was beating with excitement as we sped out over the dark blue water. Then we saw little geysers spewing from the water and the boat slowed. Up from near the boat rose a gray whale, spy-hopping fewer than ten feet away. Looking with her steady eye at we humans in the boat. Beside her was her calf.

As if on cue, the baby came swimming over to the boat and nudged it with its nose. "If you put your hand into the corner of its mouth, the whale will open its mouth and let you scratch her baleen," instructed the captain. "They love that!"

He didn't have to ask me twice. I leaned over the boat and coaxed the calf to my waiting hand and found the corner of its mouth. The next thing I knew, my entire hand was inside the mouth of a waiting whale who seemed to laugh with joy that I was giving a free sea massage.

Then the mother bumped the boat, scratching herself as if to say, "What about me?" She emerged on the other side. Signaling playtime was over.

Every time we went out to search, we saw whales. Up close. All sixty to eighty feet of them, splashing, diving, spy-hopping, and yes, mating. The massive space that is the ocean makes even them small in comparison. Playing. Living with family. Eating. Sleeping. Traveling from one end of the earth to the other. All in the world over which we travel in ships and planes. In the depths where mountains can be 13,000 feet high. A macrocosm of teeming life. Another world.

Out of the ocean yesterday an entire island sprouted. The earth shook violently in Pakistan and the ocean floor spit up a brand new piece of land. The miracle of the mixing gases in the layers of the earth looking for and finding release as they blow through Earth's crust. Mysterious movements we aren't aware of in a world just beneath our feet.

I just read an article describing the Hubble telescope's searches into what scientists thought were black holes. After leaving the telescope in the same place for eleven days, thinking there would be nothing but blackness recorded there at the end of that time, what was revealed was a depth of number of galaxies amazing in scope. What we thought was only darkness was in reality a window into more galaxies than we could count. There are over one hundred billion galaxies in space, at last count. In an ever expanding cosmos, will we ever discover all of them? There just might be an infinite number. We just don't have the power to see them yet...or never.

It's just too big. This created world. It's ordered and intentional. The moon and sun controlling tides, animal habits and habitats, vegetation and seasons. Oh, our God wants us to look at it and marvel. Wonder at His mind. Glory in His imagination. Joy that we are made in His image, able to reason and reach for what He knows so we can know Him more fully. Not so we can rule God out as Designer, but so we can capture for this world all that the Godhead meant in the beginning, "Let us make man in our own image." And God said when He looked on all He'd made, "It is very good."

PSALM 104 - God's Zoo

You make springs gush forth in the valleys. They flow between the hills. They give drink to every beast of the field. They wild donkeys quench their thirst. Beside them the birds of heaven dwell. They sing among the branches. From Your lofty abode, You water the mountains. The earth is satisfied with the fruit of Your work. You cause grass to grow for the livestock and plants for man to cultivate, that he may bring forth food from the earth and wine to gladden the heart of man, oil to make his face shine and bread to strengthen man's heart. The trees of the Lord are watered abundantly, the cedars of Lebanon that He planted. In them the birds build their nests. The stork has her home in the fir trees. The high mountains are for the wild goats. The rocks are a refuge for the rock badger.  (Verses 10-16)

Adam stood up and took his first few God-given breaths. His surroundings were lush with vegetation. The mighty trees that banked the flowing river were heavy with luscious fruit that scented the dewy air with sweetness. The woman by his side was beautiful beyond belief. "Ah-ha!" he'd cried. "Finally bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. I am not alone!" Hand in hand the lovers walked with the God of their creation learning the garden and its secrets. Mountains arose in the distance, rocky crags glistening in the sunshine. Streams flowed swiftly from their heights into valleys painted rich emerald green. Moving on the slopes were goats and gnus, badgers and skunks, elk and deer, horses and wild dogs. A menagerie of brilliance. "How did you come up with these?" Adam must have asked his God. Giggles of glee arose in the man as he watched a gopher burrow beneath the ground and a serpent slither out of sight. Monkeys swung from tree to tree calling loudly to each other in a language only they understood. The activity swirled under, around, above and beneath the new man and woman. A showcase of newly minted Earth.

I remember the first time I took Heather, our first born, to the zoo. I'd grown accustomed to elephants, zebras, gorillas and yak. Knew the smell of the zoo as well as the circus where watching lions and tigers as they yawned their boredom or jumped through hoops had become less wonderful for me. But with Heather, I saw them all for the first time as she jumped up and down with the apes (she would make gorilla faces for months afterward), squealed at the lumbering elephants, and marveled at the barking seals. A wonderland of animals almost too marvelous to comprehend. Butterflies and hummingbirds, flamingos and parrots painted by God in carnival colors. And again, the question, "How did you come up with these, Father?" Too distinct in design to be random. Too specific in purpose to be unplanned. What a mind my Father has!

Unforgotten. The tiniest to the greatest of His specific beasts are cared for by the winds and rains, sunlight and starshine of His earth. God takes care to feed His little birds and cloak the hillsides with glory (Matthew 6). The ecosystem is a masterfully planned to restore and reconstitute itself. Each element of creation is intentional and interdependent. Order doesn't just happen. We don't throw pieces of a watch up into the air and wait for them to create a time piece. Someone thinks how to design and produce a watch. We don't question that. So why the questions about God's creation?

As created beings ourselves, we've been made in His image. Out of all the animals in God's famous zoo, we are specially designed to know and yearn for Him. But we are a bunch of smarty pants. The minds God bestowed on us are a double-edged sword. And just as Adam and Eve in the garden, we've listened to the world tell us just how brilliant we are. So much so that we don't need God. And, quite frankly, we don't want Him butting in on our business.We can explain away the rhinoceros and the emu. And our brilliant explanation? Oh, they just happened. And God would chuckle if the conclusion weren't so absurd and self-destroying. All creation is designed to point to Him. And we have turned the finger the other direction. In our hubris. To our shame. And our God would pour out on us without measure His grace, love, guidance and salvation. He wills to make our faces shine with an abundance of oil and our hearts to sing with new wine. It is still His desire to walk with us in the garden, talking about our day, examining our lives, wondering at His goodness. God still wants to provide for us as surely as He feeds the wild goats on the hillside and the dolphins in the sea.

Look around at His global zoo today. The world is open to us to marvel at the ocean and its depths or the mountains and their heights. Landscapes extravagantly created and sustained by their Designer. Watch ants march and butterflies flit, puppies snuggle and cats prowl, eagles soar and fish jump, deer pose and skunks scurry. Take it in. It's made for your delight in and worship of God.

For the beauty of the earth, for the glory of the skies, for the love which from our birth over and around us lies, Lord of all, to Thee we raise, this our hymn of grateful praise.

For the wonder of each hour of the day and of the night, hill and vale, and tree and flow'r, sun and moon and stars of light; Lord of all, to Thee we raise, this our hymn of grateful praise.

For the joy of human love, brother, sister, parent, child, friends on earth, and friends above, for all gentle thoughts and mild, Lord of all, to Thee we raise, this our hymn of grateful praise.

For the joy of ear and eye, for the heart and mind's delight, for the mystic harmony linking sense to sound and sight, Lord of all, to Thee we raise this our hymn of grateful praise.

For Thyself, best Gift Divine! To our race so freely giv'n; for that great, great love of Thine, peace on earth and joy in heaven, Lord of all to Thee we raise, this our hymn of grateful praise!
Folliott S. Pierpoint

And the congregation said: "Amen!"