A Daily Dose of Good News
Thursday, January 7, 2021
Pastor Steve’s devotion is offered at https://youtu.be/CcQNoKK1EEs
A printer-friendly version of this devotion is available at DDGN 20210114
You can discuss this devotion with Pastor Steve at steve.wachtman@me.com
I’m going to start with a few introductory comments this morning
Before we get to our Daily Dose of Good News for today.
These poetic words of the Psalmist frames a prayer for us
That praises God’s intimate knowledge and appreciation
For the simple essence and transcendence
Within each one of us as a child of God.
As a foreshadow of a scientific awareness still eons away,
The Psalmist extols God’s interest in our physical being
Which indeed is fashions from element deep in the earth
As well as the dust of the stars.
God’s embrace for us is complete as that
Which we experience in our mothers womb
And perhaps reimagine hemmed in snuggly
By the blankets under which we sleep at night.
And somehow as if only one grain
Among all the grains of sand in the world
I am the grain that matters.
You are the grain that matters.
Your family member, your friend, your colleague, your competitor,
Each is the grain that matters.
May you appreciate and enjoy another day in the faith
That you matter to God.
May your give thanks to God for those today
Who work as God’s agents to help you realize that you matter.
And may you be inspired to become a vehicle for God
To impress upon another person or three that they matter too.
And now I give God the best chance to have the last
And a lasting word of Good News for you today
Reading Psalm 139:1-6; 13-18 ….
O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
You discern my thoughts from far away.
You search out my path and my lying down,
And are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue,
O Lord, you know it completely.
You hem me in, behind and before,
And lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
It is so high that I cannot attain it.
For it was you who formed my inward parts;
You knit me together in my mother’s womb,
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
That I know very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
When I was being made in secret,
Intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
In your book were written
All the days that were formed for me,
When none of them as yet existed.
How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
I try to count them—they are more than the sand;
I come to the end—I am still with you.
