RECIPIENTS OF PROVIDENCE                  James 1:12-18

‘Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father’ (v17)

The thought of it staggered one scientist: ‘On this earth,’ he said, ‘with its diameter of 7,800 miles – a trifle too large to play with! – God is keeping in His charge some four billion black-haired or light-haired, two-legged vertebrate animals. What a family – yet He feeds them all.’

There are many difficulties and problems facing us today in relation to economy, but the issue is not really that the earth cannot provide enough food. If there is a failure in production. The food is there, but it is not properly managed or apportioned. The once Prime Minister of India, Mrs Gandhi, said that there are enough resources in India to feed that nation entirely and then export two thirds of what it produces.

It’s simply not correct to blame God for the thousands of people who may die of starvation each year. The fault is not in Him, but in us. God has given us His gracious promise: ‘As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease’ (Genesis 8:22).

As Isaac Watts puts it in his grand old hymn:

‘Thy providence is kind and large,

Both man and beast Thy county share:

The whole creation is Thy charge,

But saints are Thy peculiar care.’

Is it not so? Yet how slow we are to pause and reflect that we are, in fact, literally the recipients of providence!

Father, when I think of your bountiful goodness and grace, I find it difficult to express my feelings. I echo the psalmist’s words: ‘You open your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing.’

For that I am always grateful. Amen. (EDWJ)

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Jesus never abandons or forgets His own