From Your Pastor's Heart - 09/05/2017
It didn’t take a microscope or a telescope for the kid “Growing Up on Dump Ground Road” to realize that there is more to life than what we see around us. The celestial lights are clearly visible to folks living in a rural area. The sun, moon, and stars have no luminary competition for our attention, as they do from the bright lights of a big city. On a clear night, lying on a bed of clover, we could look up into the sky and know that God’s creative handiwork extended far beyond our tiny planet called Earth.
King David wrote these words in Psalm 8:3-4: “When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have ordained, what is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man that You visit him?” It is impossible for contemplative minds to escape the reality of the vastness of God’s universe and the relative minuteness of humanity. David could not help but ask the question, in the light of God’s glorious heavenly display, “What is man?” The great king of the United Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, surrounded by all the regal trappings of his role, acknowledged with genuine humility the lowly position he held in God’s overall plan for the ages.
The amazing lesson to be found in Psalm 8 is that God has chosen to bestow great responsibilities upon these frail creatures of dust called men. David told us that God has entrusted man with the care of His creation. He wrote in verse 5: “You have crowned him with glory and honor.” These distinctions are a result of God’s coronation, not our own actions. The psalmist repeatedly cried, “O Lord, our Lord, How excellent is Your name in all the earth!” The only thing that makes man special, that sets us apart from the rest of creation, is the will and work of God. We human beings have no cause for pride or boasting, except in the excellent name of the Lord!
It was not hard for me to feel insignificant when I was growing up: being the fourth in a family of five children; living in a small house on a gravel road on the outskirts of a tiny town in a big state; and, not really excelling in either sports or academics. It came as a real surprise when God began to speak to heart of an ordinary kid living an average life, with no noteworthy skills or abilities. Yet, the Lord saw something that the rest of the world failed to see…that there was value and worth in a teenaged boy on Dump Ground Road. God feels that same way about each one of you today!
Serving in love,
Bro. Jim