READ Psalm 104:25–29. 25 There is the sea, vast and spacious, teeming with creatures beyond number—living things both large and small. 26 There the ships go to and fro, and the Leviathan, which you formed to frolic there. 27 All creatures look to you to give them their food at the proper time. 28 When you give it to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they are satisfied with good things. 29 When you hide your face, they are terrified; when you take away their breath, they die and return to the dust.
FORMED TO FROLIC. Food comes at proper seasons (verse 27) and is gathered (verse 28). Yet through it all it is God who is giving us food (verse 27). The great sea creatures “frolic” and leap in the air (verse 26), and the swallows perform aerial acrobatics. While those activities may also have practical purposes, in some deeper sense these creatures know the joy and freedom of doing what they were “formed” to do by God. We too can know joy and fulfillment only as we live according to God’s design. At this point, nature has us beat. As Elisabeth Elliot has said, “A clam glorifies God better than we do, because the clam is being everything it was created to be, whereas we are not.”105
Prayer: Lord, disobeying you is easy in the short run but hard in the long run because I am violating my own nature. And so obedience to you can be excruciating to start but is wonderful in time, because by it I become my true self. Oh, help me to remember this when things get hard! Amen.