Friday, August 20, 2004
I am really easily amazed by technology, so I am totally amazed by my wife's camera. She is quite a photographer, by the way. You can take the same camera and get two totally different views just by using two different lenses. For example, we've taken many pictures at football games, and when you put on the wide-angle lens, you can see the entire field through that camera. When you change over to what's called a macro lens, that really magnifies things, you can fill that camera's view with one face in the stands. It amazes me to see how we can go from the big picture to the smallest detail.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I'd like to have A Word With You today about "The Galaxies and the Groceries."
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Matthew 6:9. Jesus says, "This then is how you should pray. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread." Of course, this is an excerpt you probably recognize from what we know as the Lord's Prayer. The Lord's Prayer is really a camera with two lenses, and it's looking at our Heavenly Father. When you hear the word father, I don't know what that means to you. I don't know what your father experience was growing up, but remember, when we hear about God being our father, this is not the father you had on earth. God is the father you and I all wish we had.
Look at God with the wide-angle lens trained on Him. He's in heaven. His name is to be revered, hallowed, reverenced, and we should be driven to our knees by who He is. He's the God who rules a hundred billion galaxies, and when you pray, you are in the throne room from which it is all governed. Prayer should never be boring or wimpy, or trivial again when you know Who you're with.
The prayer then says, "Your kingdom come." Here's God's agenda on earth, His whole cosmic agenda, and the prayer is, "Lord, help me plug into your cosmic agenda with my life. And Your will that's done so awesomely in heaven, we want that on earth, too." Pray with a sense of the bigness and awesomeness of God.
All of a sudden, we pray, "Give us this day our daily bread." It's like that little ditty the kids have, "One of these things is not like the other." Jesus is telling us that we can come to this awesome Father with His incredible eternal plan and ask Him about today's lunch. Talk about going from wide angle to the macro lens! We can aim all the power of heaven on a very real need on earth. Here is this hallowed Father in heaven, who's bringing in a great kingdom and who has this tremendous eternal will, and we can talk to Him about our daily bread.
Hebrews 4:16 talks about going to the throne of grace and asking for "grace to help in our time of need." This is God through the macro lens. He's the God who cares about the details of your life. He cares about your bank account, about today's little need, about that hard phone call, about the rent. He cares about the car, the trip, the repairs, the discomfort, and a million other details that make up our days. This is the God who takes it from all the galaxies and all the cosmic, down to the stuff that seems so little, perhaps, from heaven's perspective. But it's so important to your Heavenly Father. He controls it all, and He's committed to you.
We can come right to Him with any prayer. What a miracle prayer it is! It brings us into the presence and love of a God who's big enough to rule this mighty universe and small enough to care about our groceries.