Jamais Vu (Part 2)

Last night I came across Psalm 147 and had to laugh about the timing with the Olympic Games, since that passage contains the verse that Eric Liddell so famously quoted in Chariots of Fire:

His pleasure is not in the strength of the horse,
nor his delight in the legs of the warrior;
 the Lord delights in those who fear him,
who put their hope in his unfailing love.  (Psalm 147:10-11)

But just a few lines down, as the Psalmist is describing the works of the Lord in the natural world, he or she writes something I had never noticed before:

¹⁵ He sends his command to the earth;
his word runs swiftly.
¹⁶ He spreads the snow like wool
and scatters the frost like ashes.
¹⁷ He hurls down his hail like pebbles.
Who can withstand his icy blast?
¹⁸ He sends his word and melts them;
he stirs up his breezes, and the waters flow.

Simply by including the possessive pronoun, the Psalmist reminds us that everything in the world is God’s, even the weather.  The wind and the hail and the hot and the cold and each little raindrop that falls from the sky—they are all God’s.  How much more so, then, every little action we make during the day?  Every word we say?  Every attitude we posses or thought we have or move we make?

I think it is a wonderful reminder that every last thing in this world is under God’s dominion—and we are its stewards.  If that’s not a tremendous reminder of the importance of being trustworthy in the small things so that He may entrust us with the greater things, I don’t know what is!