Daily Devotion – September 30, 2021 – Dr. Pat Taylor Ellison
Psalm 8
8:1 O LORD, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens.
8:2 Out of the mouths of babes and infants you have founded a bulwark because of your foes, to silence the enemy and the avenger.
8:3 When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established;
8:4 what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?
8:5 Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor.
8:6 You have given them dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under their feet,
8:7 all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field,
8:8 the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas.
8:9 O LORD, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
God the Creator is the maker of all things – the stars, the mountains, everything big and impressive. And yet this same God is mindful of human beings, such small creatures. And even babes and infants of these humans count as important to God.
In fact, this seeming contradiction in God – being the creator of the huge and being the protector and lover of the small – this paradox is something that has been a stumbling block to believers for generations. How could a God who brings natural forces into being with a word also care enough about a person to listen to prayer and help the lowly and downtrodden? Is it possible? Can we believe it?
This bigness and also smallness associated with God may have been one reason for Jesus’s coming to live amongst us. We know that Jesus had the power to do big miracles, and he also always took the side of the powerless, the downtrodden, and the suffering. His own life was real living proof of this nature of God, this essence of working big and working small at the same time. Jesus lived the central essence of God – to be in relationship to human beings and all the rest of creation. Jesus demonstrated day after day to his disciples what the Kingdom or the Reign of God was all about – caring for one another and protecting the poor and the most vulnerable.
How does our life of faith today live out those same traits in the nature of God? What do you and I do each day that helps us walk in God’s pathway, caring for one another and protecting the vulnerable?
Gracious God, Thank you for loving us. Thank you for showing us your nature to work both big and small. Help us to appreciate your creation and also never forget the need to serve others, especially those more lowly than ourselves, because they matter to you. Amen.
