“Created and cared for”

By Rev. Michael Stonhouse

Meditation – Sunday, May 19, 2024

Psalm 104: 24-34, 35b (Forward, p. 21) CEV p. 618

(Note: in the BAS etc., this is numbered as verses 25-35,37).

Certain deist thinkers in the Enlightenment Period liked to think of God as a type of ‘watchmaker’ entity. In other words, He created the world and its creatures, decided on the laws and principles guiding and setting out how it would work, and then set it all in motion—without, it must be said, any action or involvement on His part. That is what these thinkers thought about God.

Today’s passage from the Psalms suggests exactly the opposite. It depicts a God who not only created the world and its creatures and set it all in motion, but who is also intimately involved in it. In fact, in a couple of verses, we hear just how closely God takes care of it:

“All of these depend on you to provide them with food, and you feed each one with your own hand, until they are full” (verses 27-28).

The intimation from this is that if God so cares for these, His creatures, He will also care for us. Indeed, this is exactly what Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, where He suggests that as God looks after the birds of the air and the flowers of the field, He will no doubt also look after us. And we, you and I, can certainly trust Him to look after us. Amen.

Forward notes: “There move the ships, and there is that Leviathan, which you have made for the sport of it” (verse 26) (v. 27 in BAS etc.)

“This verse from Psalm 104 conjures up a vision of an old-timey map with an image of a sea monster inhabiting the vast expanse of ocean in between land masses. Though we have more scientific knowledge about the ocean than the psalmist did, those vast waters remain more foreign and inaccessible to humans than outer space. On this feast of Pentecost, in celebration of the pouring out of the Holy Spirit, we remember that the Holy Spirit was present and active in creation.

“Like the Holy Spirit, parts of creation are so strange and unexpected that I like to think God had a very good time filling the seas with giant lobsters

and fish that glow. If our knowledge of our own world is so limited, how much more so is our knowledge of the strangeness and untouchability of God?”

Moving Forward: ”What other creatures do you think God might have made ‘for the sport of it’? Share with us at #ForwardDaybyDay.”