“O Lord, how manifold are your works!
In wisdom have you 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 small and great.
There go the ships,
and Leviathan, which you formed to play in it.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.“
Have you ever stopped to think about everything that has to happen for you to eat breakfast?
Someone grows the wheat for your toast. Someone else harvests it, mills it into flour, bakes the bread, transports it, and puts it on a grocery store shelf. Farmers raise chickens that produce the eggs. Someone grows and harvests the coffee beans, often thousands of miles away.
We usually just walk into the kitchen and eat.
Psalm 104 invites us to look more closely at the world around us and see God’s hand behind it.
The psalmist looks at the incredible variety of creation and says,
“O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom have you made them all.”
Then he describes living creatures looking to God for their food. Of course, that doesn’t mean food simply falls from heaven.
God usually works through ordinary means.
He provides through farmers and truck drivers, grocery store employees and cooks. He provides through rain, soil, sunlight, plants, animals, and the abilities He has given people.
Martin Luther sometimes described these ordinary ways God works as God’s “masks.” God is hidden behind the people and processes He uses to care for His creation.
Think about how that changes the way you see an ordinary day.
The doctor caring for you is using knowledge and abilities God has given or the person repairing a power line after a storm are serving as one of God’s instruments to care for a community. Your neighbor who brings over a meal when you’re sick may be God’s answer to your prayer for daily bread or the smile from child riding his bike by your house, God’s way of brightening your day.
God is constantly at work around us, often in ways we barely notice.
Psalm 104 goes even further. Our dependence on God isn’t limited to food and shelter. The psalmist says that when God takes away the breath of His creatures, they die, and when He sends His Spirit, life is created.
Every breath is a gift.
Stop for a moment and just breathe. That was a gift from God. Every breath is an opportunity for gratitude to God.
Yet creation as we experience it now isn’t everything God intended it to be. Sin has brought suffering, decay, and death into this world. We experience God’s good gifts every day, but we also experience a creation that is broken.
That’s why our Creator entered His creation.
This is incredible in an of itself. Jesus, the Son of God, became flesh and lived among us. He ate the food His Father provided, worked with His hands, and experienced hunger, exhaustion, pain, and finally death.
Then He rose bodily from the grave.
God’s answer to our broken world isn’t to abandon His creation. He loves His creation and nn Christ, He has begun making it new.
So take a moment today to notice God’s care.
Look at your food, your home, the people who serve you, even the breath in your lungs. Behind countless ordinary gifts stands your heavenly Father, faithfully caring for the world He made.
Let’s pray…
Heavenly Father,
You have filled Your creation with countless good gifts, many of which I receive without even noticing. Open my eyes to see Your care in the ordinary people and things around me. Thank You especially for sending Jesus into this broken creation to redeem me and for the promise that through Him You will make all things new.
Amen.
As part of your devotion time, I encourage you to also pray for at least some of the following:
After praying for these people, you may want to finish your devotion time with the Lord’s Prayer…
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. They will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For Thine is the kingdom and the power, and the glory, forever and every. Amen.
In Christ’s Service,
Pastor Kurt
