June 27, 2025

Why the small blessings?

 

Today brings another thought; why does God take such great care for the smallest things? I get answers regularly for prayers about parking places, ideas for making quilts, unexpected help from workers who have fixed things in our home, the rapid growth of garden seeds, even God’s voice guiding me in shopping, or who to call today, and what to put on my chore list — a host of ordinary stuff being blessed. 

I’m reading about the goodness of God. Charnock says just creating things was not the main reason for their existence. God made all things good and rested because they were good — naturally useful to the universe, even as shadows of His own goodness. Not only that, He made all things good and useful to His supreme creation — human beings made in His image.

The Bible says, “The Lord is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made.” (Psalm 145:9) even as we might wonder “What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.” (Psalm 8:4–5) We are a display of His goodness — He made humanity after His own image, not animals, not birds or trees, bugs or flowers; but people who bear the marks of their good Creator.

Charnock goes farther to say that all of creation was made good to serve the use of humanity. Water, sunshine, plants and animals, even each other, everything was given to us because of the goodness of God. Everything. Even parking near the door, drapery salesmen who happened to be firemen and able to hang a painting in an impossible place, seeds that sprout twice as fast as the label says, all the little blessings are from His goodness.

But what if these blessings are missing? Charnock says that the “treasons” or sin of humanity against God brought misery upon that which was framed for the use of humanity. The free gift of eternal life is forfeited and that which was made good for our use will “bear the marks of His sovereign fury.”

God’s story tells how Adam forfeited all by sin and then the world became resistant to human use. Thorns and thistles, hard work. God sent a flood to renew creation, yet this renewal did not last. God planned that, “The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea. Into your hand they are delivered. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything.” (Genesis 9:2–3) yet warned that with disobedience would come great consequences:
“But if you will not listen to me and will not do all these commandments, if you spurn my statutes, and if your soul abhors my rules, so that you will not do all my commandments, but break my covenant, then I will do this to you: I will visit you with panic, with wasting disease and fever that consume the eyes and make the heart ache. And you shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it. I will set my face against you, and you shall be struck down before your enemies. Those who hate you shall rule over you, and you shall flee when none pursues you. And if in spite of this you will not listen to me, then I will discipline you again sevenfold for your sins, and I will break the pride of your power, and I will make your heavens like iron and your earth like bronze. And your strength shall be spent in vain, for your land shall not yield its increase, and the trees of the land shall not yield their fruit. (Leviticus 26:14–20)
God’s goodness desires obedience. God loves us, loves what belongs to us, but disobedience brings judgment upon sinners and their goods. At the same time, no one can boast that obeying brings a rich life, for that comes from God’s goodness, not mine, and yet it is available to all through faith in Jesus Christ and the redemption God offers — in His goodness!

PRAY: Lord, You tell me to obey because living for You brings blessing. Your pure goodness cannot bless disobedience. It is folly to think that I could do whatever flies in the face of Your image in which I was created. Thinking of Your goodness in itself is a blessing, and I am even more grateful for Your answers to my ‘little’ prayers, for in them You affirm that walking with You is the only way You intend me to live.


No comments: