For God�s grace for cabinet members as they work together
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.
�II Thessalonians 3:18
Holy God, we praise You this morning for the grace you lavished on us when we needed it most. Though we are lost in our sin, You pour out grace we do not deserve and often do not fully appreciate. Thank You Holy God for the gift of this grace, for the love and mercy that come with it, and for the limitlessness of Your love and kindness to us today. Praise to You, God of grace!
We pray today for the members of President Obama�s cabinet. Each one is shouldering huge responsibility; each one needs Your great wisdom and grace as they face each day. We ask, moreover, that they will experience Your grace as they work together on issues and concerns that impact our nation, that You may be glorified and our nation may be strengthened in You. Pour out Your grace on them today I pray, in Jesus� holy name, amen.
Just curious...I wonder why they assume that I will be praying this prayer in the morning??
The friendship of the Lord is for those who fear him,
and he makes known to them his covenant.
"...since the feat of the Lord is said to be the beginning, and as it were the way that leads to a right understanding of his will (Ps. 111:10), according as any one desires to increase in faith, so also let him endeavour to advance in the fear of the Lord."
(Commentary from Heart Aflame: Daily Readings from Calvin on the Psalms)
The basic idea is that our lives are defined by the fruit of the Spirit, which fulfill the Law. We should be depending on the Spirit for "living in a manner pleasing to God."
In Genesis 1, several things jump out at me. First is the assumption that God exists. There is no explanation about God, where he came from or anything. The writer of Genesis (attributed to Moses) assumes that the reader knows who God is. Second, the manner in which things were created..."and God said." Over and over..."and God said." God essentially spoke creation into existence. He created something out of nothing. Our pastor preached about that this past Sunday. I believe the word he used was ex nihilo, "out of nothing." God is the only being who has that ability. He gifted humanity with the ability to create, but we cannot create out of nothing. Only God can do that. The third thing I notice is the repition of the phrase, "And God saw that it was good." Everything he created, he looked at, and approved. It was good.
Did he do all of this in six days? You know, I don't know. And it really doesn't matter to me if it was six days, six years or six million years. The Bible does use the word "day" in this passage, but the Bible also tells us that a day to the Lord is like a thousand years. I do know that he was perfectly capable of doing it in six days if he wanted to. But, like I said. It's not an issue to me. I believe that he created it, and I believe that he created beings "from scratch" as it were, and not from evolution. Man came from the dust of the earth, not from swamp goo.
Chapter 2 begins by saying that "on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done..." then he rested. I'm curious about that. Does it mean that on the seventh day he was finished, or that he actually did something on that seventh day to complete the work? Doesn't say. And why did God need to rest? Was he tired? I seriously doubt that. I do know that, later on, he decreed that his people would observe that seventh day as a "holy day," and refrain from doing work on it.
There's been a lot of speculation about Genesis 2 over the years. I believe, personally, that Genesis 2 is simply a more detailed description of the creation of man and his placement in the Garden of Eden. Genesis 1 doesn't give that kind of detail, it just gives a day-by-day account of what was created.
In Genesis 2, we get a couple of details. First, we get the information that it has not rained. In fact, the flood is the first account of any rain at all on the planet. Up until that point, all moisture seems to have been provided by a mist that came up from the ground, and from the rivers in the area. I have to wonder if the Garden of Eden was a sort of natural greenhouse. Second, we get the location of the Garden of Eden. Unfortunately, two of the rivers that are mentioned no longer exist. That makes it very difficult to pin down. Never mind those angels with flaming swords that stand at the entrance to keep anyone out after Adam and Eve got tossed out. Oh, wait...I got ahead. The rivers that we know are the Tigris and the Euphrates. We can find those rivers, but the Pishon and Gihon no longer exist. As well as the original river that flowed out of Eden to form those four.
And then, in Genesis 2, something remarkable happens. God says, for the first time, "It is not good..." What he says that about is the man, Adam, being alone. So, God created a woman for him. And the first marriage was made. "And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed."
Moving on to Psalm 1. I have always liked the progression of the first couple of verses in this Psalm proclaiming blessings on the man who does not consort with wicked men. It goes from "walk" to "stand" to "sit." I don't know if this is on purpose or not, but if you think about the progression of sinfulness, it could be. At first we might walk alongside people who should not be associating with. After a while, they have some influence and we stop walking and just stand with them. Then, when their influence is complete, we simply sit down.
But the righteous man, his delight is in the law of the Lord and he meditates on it frequently. He is described as being like a tree that is on the banks of a river (or streams), constantly fed by that water. Its leaves do not wither. It yields fruit in due season. This man...in all that he does he prospers.
There is great benefit in being devoted to the Lord. A few days ago, I gleaned from my reading that I could be invincible in the power of the Lord. That would be similar to this tree described in Psalm 1. It is, essentially, invincible.
So, what do I get from all of this that is practical? (I don't plan on being so longwinded all the time.) From the Genesis readings, I get the power of God in creation. He is almighty and all powerful. He spoke things into being. He created out of nothing. What can he do in my life? He can still, if he so chooses, create something out of nothing. And he can give me the ability to stand like that tree on streams of water. My task in this is to "delight...in the law of the Lord" and meditate on it day and night.