NEW Today’s Spiritual Food for Thought is provided by Charmer Pratt. Charmer, a longtime member of Grace Covenant Church Philadelphia, has served faithfully in the welcoming ministry since 2016.

Spiritual Food for Thought for the Weekend

“Our Generous God”

Genesis 1:16

“God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars.”

Have you ever had a friend who was extremely generous but barely acknowledged it? I’m sure we can all think of someone who is great at cooking extravagant meals, designing beautiful house projects, or going very far out of their way to help you in an emergency. The greatest part about that friend is that when we thank them, they don’t even acknowledge that they did much at all.

This love that we receive from those friends is a small taste of the love we see from our Lord, which we can even see in Genesis 1 before the creation of man. If you allow me to get a little nerdy for a moment, I’ll lay down a few facts about the sun: our sun’s circumference is over 100 times larger than that of the Earth. It is 94 million miles (about 151,278,336 km) away from the Earth, but the fire from it burns so hot that we cannot get within 3 million miles (about 4,828,032 km) of it without burning up. Even at its current distance (for the hemisphere that is in summer), it can burn our skin so frequently that sunscreen is a multi-billion dollar industry!

Our sun is about the average size of a star found in the universe and far from the largest, and there are about 200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (200 sextillion, or 200 billion trillion) stars in the universe!

Now, how does God describe all of these amazing things about the stars? “He also made the stars.” These amazing balls of gas in the sky are essentially an afterthought to the Lord! This is the God we serve; One whose “side projects” of creation are beyond our imagination, yet thinks of us as His masterpieces. There is no better way to respond to such a God than with confident obedience and reverence!

Prayer: Thank you, Heavenly Father, for showing Your great power by creating the stars. Your generosity is and will always be beyond my comprehension. May I always have confidence in Your love in everything You command me to do, knowing that what You can do is beyond my comprehension and everything You command is right. Amen.

Bible Reading for Today: Haggai 1-2