Made in Wisdom

It is four in the morning on a quiet street, and the streetlights are still on. A fox crosses the road at a trot. It is in no hurry, and it is about business of its own that has nothing to do with anyone asleep behind those windows.

Psalm 104 knows that hour. "Thou makest darkness, and it is night: wherein all the beasts of the forest do creep forth. The young lions roar after their prey, and seek their meat from God." Then the shift changes: "The sun ariseth, they gather themselves together, and lay them down in their dens. Man goeth forth unto his work and to his labour until the evening." Before this, the psalm has already passed springs in the valleys, wild asses drinking, and storks nesting in the fir trees. Only after all that coming and going does today's line arrive: "O LORD, how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all." Manifold means many and varied. Proverbs says the same thing simply: "The LORD by wisdom hath founded the earth." The psalm says it with the animals left in, and it even includes one great creature made to play: "there is that leviathan, whom thou hast made to play therein."

Then the psalm adds, "The glory of the LORD shall endure for ever: the LORD shall rejoice in his works." It was written with lions and storks, and something enormous playing in the sea, right in front of it, and you belong in that same list of His works. So may you go out today under a sky nobody asked your opinion about, and notice the creatures going about their rounds whether anyone sees them or not. And may you know that the God who is glad in His own work is glad in the part of it that got out of bed this morning as you.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 266 is A New Thing Springs Forth (Isaiah 43:19).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna, Year Two