God Is the Great Creator

Introductory questions to chew

Is God's name excellent -- noble, glorious, majestic, great -- to me?

How do I develop an interest in and a consciousness of the work of His fingers?

Do I have a song (in my heart, at least)?

Am I in the habit of going to God for healing for my hurts and wounds?

Is God lifting me up...or must He cast me down?

Does God take pleasure in me?

Of Excellent Name

I found out how tarnished my name is in some minds.

Talk about surprising! As well as eye-opening and discouraging.

Now what do I do? How do I set the record straight? How do I restore trust? How do I clear my name?

I care deeply about my name and my reputation.

But I just read a verse that reminds me I need to care about another name even more:

"O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!" (Psalm 8:9).

May I "defend" His name and reputation.

May I live my life so that others attribute to Him the excellence He is due.

He remembers me!

We humans assign significance to size. The bigger something is, the more aware we are of it and the more easily we remember it. When you visit our place, it is more likely you will remember the huge redwood by our driveway than the small apple tree (buried in the blackberries out back).

What if God were that way? If I were by the Grand Canyon, He wouldn't even notice me. If I were on Mt. Hood, He would miss seeing me. If I were amid the skyscrapers of New York City, I would be out of His sight. And since I'm only one of more than six billion puny humans on a little planet in a small solar system in one of countless of galaxies scattered across a monstrous universe, I would most certainly not come to His mind.

Praise be to God, He is not that way! He is mindful of me. He not only remembers me, He also cares about me. He loves even me. Do you get it?! I am important to Him . . . and so are you!

Because God remember us, He has pity and compassion on us. He remembers our weakness and frailty, dealing with us with the gentleness of a loving father toward his small children. "Like as a father pitieth his children, so the LORD putteth them that fear him. For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust" (Psalm 103:13,14).

Because God remembers us with compassion, He also extends to us much-needed forgiveness and mercy. Remembering us and our imperfect mortality, He generously defers His righteous anger many times. "But he, being full of compassion, forgave their iniquity, and destroyed them not: yea, many a time turned he his anger away, and did not stir up all his wrath. For he remembered that they were but flesh; a wind that passeth away, and cometh not again" (Psalm 78:38,39).

How often we hear of mothers and fathers who forget their children in hot cars, returning hours later to find them dead. We also hear more and more of abusive parents who kill their children, accidentally or purposefully. And of course we know of fathers and mothers who reject their babies, aborting them before birth or dumping them afterward. Such parental behavior is contrary to nature. In this context, let Isaiah 49:15 bless you in a special way: "Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee."

Do I remember?

I said at the beginning that we assign significance to size. I should amend that to read physical size. Otherwise we would never forget, overlook, and disregard God. Way back many years ago, God's people received this warning (which they disregarded): "Beware that thou forget not the LORD thy God, in not keeping his commandments, and his judgments, and his statutes, which I command thee this day" (Deuteronomy 8:11).

Many folks remember God in a glib sort of way. They believe there is a God and at times they even profess to see Him at work. But even in their remembering, they forget.

How can that be? It seems senseless to say we can forget while remembering. The explanation is found in Deuteronomy 8:11 -- to God, disobeying Him is the same as forgetting Him. So, do you remember God?