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.”
Abraham Kuyper, opening a new university in Amsterdam in 1880, said there is not one square inch in the whole domain of human existence over which Christ does not cry, Mine.
Friend, I want to set that beside a much smaller use of the same verse, because the grand version can be admired at no cost to anybody.
The earth is the LORD's, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein. It stands at the head of a psalm about who may climb the hill and stand in the holy place, so the ownership is established before the worship starts. Everything you handle today has an owner who is not you, and that includes the people, since the sentence does not stop at the soil.
Paul quotes it once, and the setting is almost comic. A Christian in Corinth is standing in a meat market wondering whether the joint in front of him was killed in a temple. Paul's ruling: Whatsoever is sold in the shambles, that eat, asking no question for conscience sake. And the reason he gives is this verse. The meat was never the idol's to begin with. God says the same about the whole food chain in Psalm 50: If I were hungry, I would not tell thee: for the world is mine, and the fulness thereof. That is where the doctrine touches the ground for most of us, at the counter and at the table.
The blessing in the first line is that you never owned it and never had to. Handle other people's property carefully today, since all of it is his.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 49 is Blessed Mourning (Matthew 5:4).