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Topic:The provision of God
DEVOTION OF APRIL 9
READ THE SCRIPTURE: GENESIS 1: 29-31
Then God said: “Behold, I have given you every plant that gives seed, which is on all the earth, as well as every tree in which there is fruit and seed. You can eat all this. ”
Genesis 1:29
The point of all this narrative is that God has made a wonderful and complete provision for His creation. The world of nature is filled with the most amazing evidence of God’s care.
How is it that some birds can fly with an accurate instinct through half the world and find a tiny point of land in the middle of the ocean, even though this is the first time they have made the flight? How is it that bees can maintain the temperature in their hive with a variation of a few degrees, whether it is a warm summer day or a cold winter morning outside? How is it that certain varieties of spiders have learned how to capture air bubbles and build nests under water, pushing those bubbles down from the surface and thereby creating tiny immersion bells in which they care for their young? Who has taught you to do something as strange as that?
But look at the people. Notice how apparently ill-prepared we are without basically having any instinct. We need to be taught everything again with patience in each generation. If the children were abandoned in wild places, as has sometimes happened accidentally, their lives would be more like those of the beasts than the beasts themselves and could not even talk to each other. Is not it humiliating to realize that we could solve the problems of the earth by eliminating a single species: Homo sapiens?? If tomorrow something happened so that humans were eliminated from the face of the earth, it would not be too long before the sky cleared and we could see the stars at night, the waters and rivers would run clean again, the forests they would grow back on the slopes of the bare hills and the earth would be restored to be an orderly, balanced and precious kingdom.
What is the problem? The problem is humanity. What is the reason for this? The Lord Jesus hit the nail on the head by saying: “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4: 4). When God provided bread as the basic food of man, a bread made from the grains of the earth, the plants that gave seed and its fruits, His intention was, as we have seen throughout this story, that this physical bread was an image of the bread needed in despair by people also at the spiritual level.
That “bread” of the spirit means understanding the will of God. “I am the bread of life,” said Jesus. “He who comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never thirst” (John 6:35). He will not walk in darkness again; he will not feel that he does not know what to do about the next step he must take to solve the problems he faces, and he will not be like a naked and homeless orphan wandering blindly through a mysterious universe whose forces he does not understand, who will know where he is going and what he is doing as well as how to do it. The Son of God has come and He gives us understanding.
Lord, I am hungry for the bread of the Spirit. I beg that that bread be my provision today in trying to understand and do Your will.
Application to life
Does not it make us feel humble to realize that we could solve the problems of the earth by eliminating one of the species: Homo sapiens ? How does God’s provision teach us through His Son?
