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When I look at Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have set in place, 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 8:3-5)
David the psalmist knew what it was to feel small. When the young shepherd boy volunteered to fight the giant Goliath, King Saul pointed out just how small David was: “You are but a youth” (1 Samuel 17:33b). As a shepherd, alone with his flock under the night sky and surrounded by the majesty of God’s creation, David felt small and unnoticed. He is moved to ask His Creator: “What is man that You are mindful of him, the son of man that You care for him?”
God created human beings in His own image, making them only a little lower in glory and gifts than the heavenly beings, the angels who were also created to serve their Maker. God loved the people He made, crowning them with glory and honor. Then, tempted by the devil, our first parents Adam and Eve rejected the glory and honor that God gave them, choosing instead to disobey God and glorify themselves, as we still do today as we sin against our Creator. Yet God still loved the people He created. He would restore the glory and honor that He alone can give, and He did so through the gift of His own Son.
Jesus, the King of angels, was for a little while made lower than the heavenly beings. For the sake of our salvation, Jesus was made small in the womb of His virgin mother. At His birth the little infant King was wrapped in swaddling cloths and laid in a manger. Jesus came to suffer the penalty of death that we deserved for our sins. He was raised from death and exalted to reign at God’s right hand. Jesus was “crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God He might taste death for everyone” (Hebrews 2:9b). Through Jesus Christ, God restores to us the glory and honor that we in our sin had traded away.
Gazing at a field of stars or facing our own “giants” in the form of trials and trouble, we may feel small, but to our Creator and Lord we are never small or insignificant. We are most certainly noticed by God. He knows when even one little sparrow falls to the ground and, as He tells us, we are of more value than sparrows (see Matthew 10:29-31)! By faith we are crowned with the honor and glory of our crucified and risen Savior, a gift of glory that is ours now and forever. We are noticed. More than that, we are loved.
WE PRAY: Lord God, when I feel small and unnoticed, help me to remember that You are watching over me with love and care. Amen.
This Daily Devotion was written by Dr. Carol Geisler.
Reflection Questions:
- Why would God use those who are small and insignificant in the world to work His purposes?
- How is it that Jesus became “small” for us? What does His becoming human tell us about the connection He has with us?
- God wants us to know that He cares for us. Check out Psalm 139:14, Isaiah 43:1, 1 Peter 2:9, and John 14:1-3 to see how much.
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