Our Openhanded God: Reflections from the ER
God is openhanded. God is generous and he always provides.
All God’s Gift
My family and I are vacationing on Sanibel Island this spring break. It’s been a good—including two sets of pickleball. God’s given us a refreshing, decompressing week.
The sun and sea, the shells and birds, the waves and sand and breeze are unbeatable, this side of heaven. That’s not to mention the Dirty Sanddollar ice cream between sunset walks and cheery games overlooking the sea.
Every single minute of it is a gift from the Father whose goodness and mercy follow his children every day of their lives. Not a minute do I take for granted.
God is openhanded with his creatures. He is not tight-fisted. He is never miserly.
Our Openhanded God
“I am openhanded,” is what God is showing me about himself this week. He’s showed the sea that teems with creatures innumerable—God let me walk a mile on the shore beside a school of stingrays and silver fish and playful dolphins leapt out of the sea. God feeds each of these.
The beach, too, beams with brilliant birds,
Every one of these God graciously, openhandedly feeds.
The white ibis isn’t worried. The seagulls and sandpipers don’t lose sleep over the next meal. Their food—mussels, clams, and scallops—keep washing up, with the tide, day and night.
The massive brown pelicans, whose in-flight synchrony and ornate dives leave the Navy’s Blue Angels in the dust, resurface with fish filling their baggy gullets.
Filled With Good Things
God opens his hand and they are filled with good things. The Lord feeds the birds.
And if the birds, how much more the sons and daughters of God? “Look at the birds of the air,” our Lord Jesus advised (Matthew 6:26), “for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?”
Note: you are. You most definitely are!
Meeting the Openhanded God in Psalm 104
All week, I’ve been meditating on Psalm 104, and especially these verses,
24 O Lord, how manifold are your works!
In wisdom have you made them all;
the earth is full of your creatures.
25 Here is the sea, great and wide,
which teems with creatures innumerable,
living things both small and great.
26 There go the ships,
and Leviathan, which you formed to play in it.
27 These all look to you,
to give them their food in due season.
28 When you give it to them, they gather it up;
when you open your hand, they are filled with good things…
When God opens his hand, we are filled with good things.
A Great and Good Housekeeper
When you give it to them, they gather it up;
Psalm 104:28 (ESV)
when you open your hand, they are filled with good things…
God, Matthew Henry wrote,
“is a bountiful benefactor… He supports the armies both of heaven and earth. Even the meanest creatures are not below his cognizance. He is openhanded in the gifts of his bounty, and is a great and good housekeeper that provides for so large a family.”
As I walk the beach and see the pelicans dive and the ibis poke and the sandpipers run off with their meaty shells, I see that God is openhanded. He gives them food.
But also, they gather it up.
They Gather It Up
The fish and the birds, and we, must gather God’s goodness up. Even as Israelites had to gather the manna, and we must go to the market.
“They expect not,” Matthew Henry wrote, “that Providence should put it into their mouths.”
But also, there would be nothing to gather if God did not first give.
God gives the goodness, and his creatures gather it up.
“Here is divine liberality with its open hand filling needy creatures till they want no more: and here is divine omnipotence feeding a world by simply opening its hand,” C.H. Spurgeon said, of Psalm 104:28. “Let us praise the openhanded Lord, whose providence and grace satisfy our mouths with good things.”
He satisfies the hungry with good things.
Divine Liberality
God has provided richly for my family and me. We looked to him, to give us our food—our spiritual and physical food. We looked, and he opened his hand and gave us this feast. And we have been filled with such goodness this week.
That does include this last day of our vacation. In 15 hours, we check out. I type from the ER at HealthPark, Fort Myers. This morning, at my request, I was gathering up the goodness of pickleball with my family this morning. My nephew and husband one the first game and my competive juices for our best of three were just flowing, when I lunged.
It felt like a shot dead center of the back of my ankle. Everyone on the court heard the “pop.”
My Achilles tendon ruptured. For now, my calf muscle is disconnected from my ankle.
God will help us sort this out.
Openhanded Goodness in the ER
But for now, in an air-conditioned room, reclining on a soft bed with my MacBook on my lap and my husband on my side. I’m waiting for the doctor to read the x-rays and maybe prescribe me crutches or a boot. I’m not on the seashore.
But I’m trying to gather God’s goodness up.
I was hoping to post from the condo overlooking the sea, but this may be an even better way to invite you to join me in worshiping our openhanded Lord.
Let’s keep looking to him to give what is good. Because he will.
Then, wherever we are, it’s on us to gather it up.
