Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 49 · February 18
Whose Earth It Is
“The earth is the LORD’s, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein.”
Friend,
In 1880 Abraham Kuyper opened a new university in Amsterdam. In his speech that day he said there is not one square inch of human life over which Christ does not cry, "Mine!"
I want to set that beside a much smaller place where the Bible uses the same truth, because the grand version is easy to admire and costs nobody anything.
"The earth is the LORD's, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein." It opens a psalm that goes on to ask who may climb God's hill and stand in His holy place. So the question of who owns everything is settled before the worship begins. Everything you handle today belongs to Someone other than you. That includes the people around you, because the verse does not stop at the soil: it names "they that dwell therein" as well.
Paul quotes this verse in only one passage, and the setting is almost funny. A Christian in Corinth is standing at a meat stall, wondering whether the meat in front of him came from an animal sacrificed in a pagan temple. Paul's answer is this: "Whatsoever is sold in the shambles, that eat, asking no question for conscience sake." The shambles was the meat market. The reason Paul gives is our verse: "For the earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof." The meat never belonged to the idol in the first place. In Psalm 50 God says the same about all food: "If I were hungry, I would not tell thee: for the world is mine, and the fulness thereof." For most of us, that is where this truth touches daily life: at the counter and the table.
So here is the blessing hidden in the first line: you never owned any of it, and you never had to. The One who owns the earth also holds your table and your tomorrow, and He takes good care of what is His. May you eat today with thanks, handle other people's things with care, and rest in knowing that all of it, and you with it, belongs to Him.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 49 is Blessed Mourning (Matthew 5:4).