Daily Reading
Daily Thought
“But the Lord is the true God;
he is the living God and the everlasting King.
It is he who made the earth by his power,
who established the world by his wisdom,
and by his understanding stretched out the heavens” (Jeremiah 10:10, 12).
In a discussion of first causes, or “what started everything,” the believer’s answer is God. Then comes the snappy retort, “But, who created God?” Really? If someone else created God, would not that someone else then be God? Then who created that one? Ad infinitum. The point is, there is a beginning and either nothing or some One started everything. Those are the choices.
Idolatry is replacing God with something else, but Jeremiah argues that anything else is actually nothing, “Idols are like scarecrows in a cucumber field, and they cannot speak; they have to be carried, for they cannot walk. Do not be afraid of them, for they cannot do evil, neither is it in them to do good” (Jeremiah 10:5). Our idols nowadays are not so much wood and stone, but ideas. In college, I was unprepared for an essay exam, so I wrote a lot of nothing, hoping volume would pass for knowledge. When the paper was graded and returned, the professor had written across the front, large and in red, “This is not right. It is not even wrong.” It was nothing. Not bad, not good; nothing. “Every goldsmith is put to shame by his idols, for his images are false, and there is no breath in them. They are worthless, a work of delusion” (Jeremiah 10:14-15).
The problem with nothing is, well, Billy Preston sang it, “Nothin’ from nothin’ leaves nothin’.” There is a simple poetic sense to that. “Nothing comes from nothing. Nothing ever could,” submits Julie Andrews in Sound of Music. “So somewhere in my youth or childhood, I must have done something good.” She is on to something.
And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. ~Genesis 1:31
Daily Prayer
My Father in heaven, You are holy and good, righteous and wonderful, and You made me in Your image. I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Every one is.
I know, God, that I am Your creation, accountable to You. I am not my own, I belong to You, and the welfare of others is my concern because it is Your concern. You have blessed me, Lord, and I shall strive to be a blessing to others. What I have I will share, holding loosely all that You have placed in my possession. May I be an agent of Your grace to this world.
Amen