To Encourage You

Psalm 115:12-13 “The Lord has remembered us; he will bless us; he will bless the house of Israel; he will bless the house of Aaron; he will bless those who fear the Lord, both the small and the great.”

In the vastness of the universe, have you ever thought about how small we are?  I’ve had the thought, from time to time, particularly when I’ve been on vacation somewhere to a place I’ve not been before, how the people in this new place (to me), have lived their entire lives and never knew I existed and vice versa.  They’ve lived their entire lives out of sight and out of mind from my perspective.  Then think about this world from the perspective of God.  Think about how vast He is. Think about how huge this earth is compared to the people who live on it, and yet how small the earth is compared to the planets and stars that we can see with our naked eye. 

You could travel for thousands of miles at the speed of light and never reach the edge of what we can see with the Hubble telescope. I’ve read that If we took our entire solar system and shrunk it to the size of a quarter, the Milky Way galaxy that our solar system is a part of would be the size or the entire United States! And yet there are thousands upon thousands of galaxies in the universe, with each galaxy is comprised of millions of stars.  As Carl Sagan once stated, there are more stars in the universe than all the grains of sand on the entire earth.  It’s mind boggling.  Yet our God made it all by speaking into existence. Such is His vastness, and such is His power.

And yet, the scripture above says that He “remembers” us.  The word “remembers” is translated from the same word “mindful” in Psalm 8:4 in which the psalmist asks, “what is man that you are mindful of him?”  Isn’t it incredible that the Lord is mindful of us, every single one of us?  But then the Scriptures go beyond this to say that God is not just mindful of us, i.e., that He’s aware of us, but that He is intimately aware of us. It says “You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether. You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me (Psalm 139:2-5).”  Jesus told us that “even the hairs of (our) head are all numbered (Luke 12:7).”  No wonder David said “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it (Psalm 139:6).”

But beyond all this, God doesn’t just know the intimate details about us.  He blesses us!  He takes care of us.  He meets our needs. He encourages us and sustains our life each moment of every day.  And He does this, again as the psalm above tells us, for “both the small and great.”  “Small” in this verse, is speaking of small from our perspective, not Gods.  Even the greatest among us, the richest, the strongest, the most famous, are as dust and a vapor that vanishes in a moment in comparison to our great God. And yet the smallest from our perspective, i.e., the poorest, the disabled, the infant, the homeless, the refugee, the most obscure, are just as valued in the mind of God as any others. 

So, in light of all this, how should we view one another? Should we see ourselves as better, greater, or more significant than anyone else?  Obviously, the answer is “No!”  In fact, the Lord has confirmed this in these words: “I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think (Romans 12:3).” And then our view of others should be demonstrated in how we act toward them.  As Jesus said, in the final judgment our Master will say to us, “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me (Matthew 25:40).” 

What a glorious thing that this vast God, this Lord of the universe, is mindful of us and blesses us. May God help us to be mindful of one another, and not just the “great” but also the “small.” We know that our God, in His majesty, is One who shows no partiality (Romans 2:11), so, quite obviously, neither should we.