This devotional first appeared in https://www.revivalandreformation.org
What are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? Yet you have made them a little lower than angels [margin], and crowned them with glory and honor. Psalm 8:4, 5, NRSV.
Our kind heavenly Father would have His children trust in Him as a child trusts in earthly parents. But we too often see poor, feeble mortals loading themselves down with cares and perplexities that God never intended them to bear. They have reversed the order; they are seeking the world first, and making the kingdom of heaven secondary. If even the little sparrow, which has no thought of future need, is cared for, why should the time and attention of human beings, who are made in the image of God, be wholly absorbed with these things?
God has given us every evidence of His love and care, yet how often we fail to discern the divine hand in our manifold blessings. Every faculty of our being, every breath we draw, every comfort we enjoy, comes from Him. Every time we gather around the family board to partake of refreshments, we should remember that all this is an expression of the love of God. And shall we take the gift, and deny the Giver? …
When Adam and Eve were placed in their Eden home, they had everything that a benevolent Creator could give them to add to their comfort and happiness. But they ventured to disobey God, and were therefore expelled from their lovely home. Then it was that the great love of God was expressed to us in one gift, that of His dear Son. If our first parents had not accepted the gift, the race would today be in hopeless misery. But how gladly did they hail the promise of the Messiah.
It is the privilege of all to accept this Savior, to become children of God, members of the royal family, and to sit at last at God’s right hand. What love, what marvelous love, is this! John calls upon us to behold it: “Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God.”
Notwithstanding the curse was pronounced upon the earth that it should bring forth thorns and thistles, there is a flower upon the thistle. This world is not all sorrow and misery. God’s great book of nature is open for us to study, and from it we are to gain more exalted ideas of His greatness and unexcelled love and glory.–The Review and Herald, October 27, 1885.
