August 13, God’s Creation

Today’s reading: Psalms 61-65

“You care for the land and water it; you enrich it abundantly.The streams of God are filled with water to provide the people with grain, for so you have ordained it. You drench its furrows and level its ridges; you soften it with showers and bless its crops. You crown the year with your bounty, and your carts overflow with abundance” - Psalm 65:9-11.

God is in love with His creation, and He tends to it personally and with great care. In today’s passage, the psalmist celebrates the abundance of crops that come from God’s role as divine farmer. What’s more, the psalms contain an ongoing focus on and fascination with God and His creation, referring regularly to mountains, rivers, streams, thunder, lightning, grass, seas and animals. Then Jesus came and continued this focus, using nature and everyday life as the foundation for His teaching. If God is so connected to His creation, then you should be as well. This would involve taking time to appreciate and acknowledge God’s role in creation as He obviously intended mankind to do:

Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:8-9).

What can you do to learn more about the Lord as you study His creation? What can you do to incorporate those lessons with others, even if it’s just your family? What can you do to better care for God’s creation?