Daily Devotional – May 26, 2020

Well, good afternoon on day 66 of this supposed shelter -in -place.

I don't know about you, but maybe it's just me. It just seems like people aren't taking this too seriously much anymore.

I see just about as much traffic as I did three months ago out on the roads.

And yeah, I guess there was a huge rally yesterday at Millennium Park in Chicago.

Lots and lots of people there that weren't supposed to be there. After all, we're in a shelter -in -place.

But all of the Memorial Day celebrations got canceled. The programs and services and so forth got canceled.

And so this was sort of like a spontaneous get -together down there in Millennium Park. And basically, it was a time just to remember those who had fallen for our country and served our country.

And also, I think, to call for a restoring of the freedoms that those who died fought to preserve.

Well, then I saw in the paper this morning that this iconic biker bar over in Savannah, every year for Memorial Day weekend, they have a huge thing, a car show and all this kind of stuff.

And it's one of the biggest weekends of that particular establishment's business.

And they're not supposed to have it, according to the governor's edicts. However, the business did appeal to their county board and ask, you know, we're going to do this.

Got any problem with it? The county board basically signed off on it, said that it was a go.

So I'm sure Governor Pritzker was rather ticked about that, probably ruined the

Memorial Day party that he had up at his Lake Geneva home outside of the state of Illinois.

Kind of like violating his own shelter in place thing. Well, anyway, you wonder where all this is headed?

I don't know. I don't know. It's kind of almost kind of scary to think where all this could be headed.

Well, anyway, I hope that day 65 for you, Memorial Day, afforded you a nice change of pace to, you know, maybe get a little bit of reprieve from all the all the

COVID drama. I especially hope you took some time to remember the fallen soldiers who gave their lives for our freedom, even that freedom to speak out against our own government when the government has stepped out of line.

You know, we've inherited a rare, priceless way of life in this nation. It's one

I think that we too easily take for granted and perhaps have recently been able to appreciate more those freedoms and how quickly they can be taken from us.

Well, what have you missed most during this extended lockdown? Church?

Have you missed church? It was really good to regather this past Sunday and what a joy it was.

And I noticed more than one person dabbing their eyes during the service at one point or another for joy, no doubt.

I felt that same emotion myself, especially as we were singing together for the first time in nearly three months.

Maybe you've missed a trip to the barber or the salon. Obviously, I found an open shop.

I did have to go out of state to find it, though. And that place just opened, I think, a week or two earlier, and the person cutting my hair told me that they were down for a month or more.

I can't remember exactly how long, maybe six weeks. But anyway, I got the impression that she was so excited to be back at her job that she couldn't stop the work.

So once she got cutting on the hair, she just couldn't stop. So as you can see,

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that my hair hadn't been that long since I was in high school.

And now it hadn't been this short since my first day of Bible college that had sort of a boot camp kind of policy for guys' haircuts back in the day.

I also saw a video of a nine -year -old boy, speaking of things that you miss most during the lockdown, a nine -year -old boy from Singapore who literally broke down in tears when he bit into some

McDonald's Chicken McNuggets for the first time in over three weeks. Seriously, Chicken McNuggets.

Well, this morning for only the second time this year, I grabbed my cup of coffee, my

Bible, and my notebook, and I went outside on the patio for my devotional time.

And I, every day, read from four different sections of the Bible. So today was 2

Samuel, the Gospel of John, Psalm 119, and a couple of verses from Proverbs.

Well, these are the two verses that I read from Proverbs 16, and they really struck a chord for a couple of different reasons.

Verses 4 and 5 say this, The Lord has made everything for its purpose, even the wicked for the day of trouble.

Everyone who is arrogant in heart is an abomination to the Lord. Be assured, he will not go unpunished.

So the very opening statement of these two verses is quite compelling, isn't it?

The Lord has made everything for its purpose. Now, listen to what that statement says.

Well, in the first place, it affirms the existence of a transcendent creator. Pardon my theological jargon there, but I think it's important to understand what that means.

A transcendent creator. That is, the statement says that the Lord made everything, and if he then made everything, then he is outside of and above what he has created.

So he's a creator who is transcendent. He's outside of what he's created, and he is over it.

He is above it. Well, then this statement also affirms the totality of his creation.

He has made everything. Everything. Now, this is what the

Apostle John echoes in his gospel. Right at the beginning of the first chapter, as he opens his book, he speaks of Jesus as the word, and he says, all things were made through him.

That is, through Jesus. And listen, he says, without him was not anything made that was made.

So everything that exists, everything that is created, that is made, God, the

Lord, made it. And then it also affirms the purposefulness of every created thing.

The Lord has made everything for its purpose. Everything.

All right, now let me explain why this jumped out at me. As I said, I was sitting outside on our patio, and I had spent some time out there yesterday, and some

Sunday afternoon as well. Sunday was the first time I was out there on the patio at all this season.

And I wasn't out there very long on Sunday when I realized I'd forgotten to get something out of the garage that was very important.

The patio torches. And fortunately, when I went in to get them and opened up the cabinet, and there they were, and right there next to them was a full unopened bottle of the patio torch fuel.

You know, the kind of stuff that's supposed to keep the mosquitoes and the bugs away. Well, here's why this was important.

Because about three minutes after I sat down on the patio Sunday afternoon, some pesky gnats came buzzing around my head, wanting to go exploring in my ear canal and get a drink out of my eyes.

Well, the patio torches rescued us from those pesky gnats. Well, then this morning, once the sun came out, so did the gnats.

So again, I lit up the torches and the gnats seemed to go looking for breakfast someplace else, which was great.

And then I read this. The Lord has made everything for its purpose.

And I thought about those annoying gnats. What in the world is their purpose?

And I looked out in the yard and I thought about that creeping Charlie that just, you know, comes up in the spring.

And before you know it, it's completely covering your backyard by midsummer. And I wondered, what is the purpose of that creeping

Charlie? And what about the wood -eating ants that got into one of my fence posts and ate away at that post from the inside until it was rotten and fell over?

What is the purpose of such things? Well, I don't pretend to have the answers to that question, but I have seen many examples of some supposedly really smart scientists who've assumed that some things serve no purpose other than merely getting in our way.

And so they take steps to get those things out of our way and eradicate them from the planet, from our existence.

And in so doing, they create a cascade of unforeseen negative consequences.

I've seen this work the other way too, haven't you? Have you ever driven down I -75 on the way to Florida through the states of Kentucky and Tennessee and Georgia?

There's this stuff, this vine that's growing and it just covers the hillsides and covers the mountains and covers the trees.

It just covers everything. It's called kudzu. And somebody thought it would be a great idea to import that from Japan and have it as feed, as food for cows, grazing.

The problem is cattle don't really like it all that well and the kudzu grows faster than they could eat it anyway.

And so before you know it, it has taken over great swaths of land everywhere. All right, so it does have some kind of a purpose.

And when we try to go beyond its purpose or get it outside of its purpose, we can create a mess there as well.

So I don't know, when all is said and done, perhaps one of the purposes of those pesky things is just that, to be pesky things that keep us humble.

I mean, after all, that text continues and says, everyone who is arrogant of heart is an abomination to the

Lord. So maybe we just have these pesky things to keep us humble.

Well, we'll come back to these couple of Proverbs this week. There's quite a bit more in those two verses and I hope you'll be able to catch the rest of it.

Well, for now, let's have a word of prayer and get back to what you have to do for the remainder of the day.

Our Father and our God, we're thankful for all things that you have created and the knowledge that you have a purpose for everything that you have made.

Bless those thoughts to our hearts today, we pray in Jesus' name, amen. All right, have a good day and God bless you on the rest of this beautiful Tuesday.