Nature Gives Thanks

Reading in Ps 145 this morning, where David writes: All of your works will thank you, Lord, and your faithful followers will praise you (Ps. 145.10 NLT). This is one of those passages in which nature is described as if it were animate. How can a rock for instance thank the Lord, and yet this is what we find again and again in the Scriptures.

I find this interesting. Why would God choose to use revelation this way? I'm wondering if it is a manifestation of how closely linked he is with his creation and how all of creation points us towards him. This is not to imply that God is a part of his creation, as if we believed in pantheism. I think it points more towards the wisdom and loving care with which God created and sustains the world. He did not set it adrift and step back to allow it to run on its own. He is actively, carefully, and wisely involved in guiding and directing all of his creation. This is the message of the Scriptures.

God Delights in Taking Responsibility

It never ceases to amaze me how God positively delights in taking responsibility for stuff that we would prefer to explain away. Take Psalms 147.17, for instance (my Bible reading highlight for the day). Whatever the natural explanation for snow and ice, the Psalmist claims that God is behind it all, that God is the primary cause. It is God who hurls down his crystals of ice like crumbs. God is ultimately responsible for all that happens in nature and no one else. He allows earthquakes and natural disasters and storms and the writers of Scripture were never hesitant to assign this to him. It is a breath-taking acceptance of responsibility by God.

As usual, Charles Spurgeon (who is my favorite commentator on the Psalms by far) manages to be both rigorously scriptural and brilliantly devotional at the same time. He writes:

That which God sends, whether it be heat or cold, no man can defy with impunity, but he is happy who bows before it with childlike submission. When we cannot stand before God we will gladly lie at his feet, or nestle under his wings.