“Nature’s Best Photography Awards” and grandeur in the sky

If you’re looking for some inspiration today, I invite you to check out “Nature’s Best Photography Awards 2024.” From a mother bear hugging her cubs, to owls having a conversation, monarch butterflies blanketing the sky, and tigers wrestling, the images remind us that when God created our world, he pronounced it “good” (Genesis 1:10, 12, 18, 21, 25).

Then, if you’re still in need of encouragement, you might look up at the sky tonight, where you’ll see the last supermoon of the year and the Leonid meteor shower on display. Now consider that it’s the parts we cannot see that can stagger the mind the most:

• Scientists tell us our universe is expanding faster than the speed of light.
• It takes light ninety-three billion years to travel across just the parts of the universe we can observe from our planet.
• Scientists don’t know if the universe is finite or infinite or what it is made of at its most fundamental level.
• Only 4 percent of the universe is composed of ordinary matter, such as protons, neutrons, electrons, and other particles that provide us with stars, planets, rocks, trees, and so on. About 70 percent is made up of “dark energy,” which no one understands.

Here’s the most encouraging news of all: the One who made all of that and measures it with the palm of his hand (Isaiah 40:12) also holds you in that same hand (John 10:29). While he called his creation “good,” after he made humans and placed us on our planet, he called his work “very good” (Genesis 1:31).

I say all of this to make a simple point: no matter whom you voted for in the last elections, no matter what party (if any) you identify with, no matter what happens with presidential appointments and transitions and all that is going on in Washington these days, there is only one King in the universe.

The sooner you make him your king today, the better.

The same goes for our country.

Seeing God in a tricycle

I was walking this morning when I came upon a tricycle sitting beside the path. No one who saw it would think it just “happened” to be there, that the bars, wheels, pedals, and handles all somehow coincidentally and chaotically fell into place to become the child’s toy I saw.

How much more complex is the universe than a tricycle?

Consider a thought experiment: take a moment to examine your hand. Look at the skin, arteries, and veins you can see. Think of the bones, joints, tendons, and other parts you cannot see.

Was David not right to say to God, “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14)?

Now reflect for a moment on human history, with the grandeur and demise of empires across the ages. And remember that the One who controls the world, who causes nations to rise and fall by his providence (cf. Daniel 5:26–28), is still “King of kings and Lord of lords” (Revelation 19:16).

Is “history” not “his story”?

How can we join our story with his today?

One: Trust God over ourselves

Today’s reflections invite us to ask with King David, “What is man that you are mindful of him?” (Psalm 8:4).

A wildfire is raging on the New York–New Jersey border, just one of eight large wildfires burning today. Meanwhile, another hurricane could form late this week and emerge in the Gulf of Mexico next week.

Every natural disaster reminds us that “as for man, his days are like grass; he flourishes like a flower of the field; for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more” (Psalm 103:15–16). This is why we need to remember: “The steadfast love of the Lᴏʀᴅ is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him” (v. 17).

Do you “fear him” today?

Two: Experience the Creator personally

I remember the first time I saw Mt. Olympus for myself. I was leading a study tour of Greece and Turkey; our buses pulled over on a highway so our guide could point out the famous peak in the distance.

I felt immense gratitude that the God I worship does not live atop a distant mountain but in my heart, that the same Spirit who brought Jesus into our world brought him into my world and now lives in me as his temple (1 Corinthians 3:16).

In his devotional for today, Oswald Chambers writes:

We have to get out into faith in Jesus Christ continually; not a prayer meeting Jesus Christ, nor a book Jesus Christ, but the New Testament Jesus Christ, who is God Incarnate, and who ought to strike us to his feet as dead. Our faith must be in the One from whom our experience springs. Jesus Christ wants our absolute abandon of devotion to himself.

Does he have yours today?

Three: Follow Jesus at all costs

Our Lord bluntly told us: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23, my emphasis). Commenting on these words, Billy Graham wrote:

Jesus was warning his disciples that it would be costly for them to follow him. It would be costly because they would have to give up their own plans and goals; it would be costly also because they must share in his rejection and death. No wonder “many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him” (John 6:66).

The cost of following Jesus has not changed. We want to cling to our plans—but he says they must go. We want to live for ourselves—but he says we must live for him. We want to live a life of pleasure and ease—but he says we must follow him to the cross.

Why follow him, then? Because he alone is our omnipotent and omnibenevolent Lord. This means not only that he can do what is best for us but that he wants only what is best for us. All it costs us to follow Jesus is repaid and more in his loving providence.

You cannot measure the eternal significance of present faithfulness.

Four: Help America make God our only king

The Lord grieved for his people: “They made kings, but not through me. They set up princes, but I knew it not” (Hosea 8:4).

Is America doing the same?

God can give only what we are willing to receive and lead only those who will follow. Because he is a loving Father, he wants only the best for us and for our nation. But if we will not submit to his Spirit and obey his word, we cannot experience his power and benefit from his wisdom. If we will not make him our king and ourselves his subjects, we cannot flourish in the kingdom he intends for us to serve.

The best way to intercede for our nation and her leaders, then, is to pray that they make Christ their king. The best way to serve our fellow citizens is to help them make Christ their king.

And the best way to persuade America to make Christ our king is for America’s Christians to make him our king.

With words that could have been a reflection on today’s theme, St. Ambrose of Milan wrote this hymn in the fourth century:

O God, creation’s secret force,

yourself unmoved, all motion’s source,

who from the morn till evening ray

through all its changes guide the day.

Grant us, when this short life is past,

the glorious evening that shall last;

that, by a holy death attained,

eternal glory may be gained.

To God the Father, God the Son,

and God the Spirit, Three in One,

may every tongue and nation raise

an endless song of thankful praise!

Let’s make his prayer ours and then answer it with our praise and witness, to the glory of God.