Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Psalms 145:16
Thou openest thine hand, and satisfiest the desire of every living thing.
16. satisfiest the desire of every living thing ] This rendering probably gives the right sense. Cp. Psa 104:28, on which it is based, “thou openest thine hand, they are satisfied with good.” Cp. Psa 145:19. The word rendered desire may however mean the good will, favour of God (Psa 106:4): hence R.V. marg., satisfiest every living thing with favour.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Thou openest thine hand – By the mere opening of the hand all needful gifts are bestowed on the creatures dependent on thee. The same words are found in Psa 104:28; see the notes at that passage.
And satisfiest the desire of every living thing – All kinds of creatures – people, fowls, beasts, fishes, insects – the innumerable multitudes that swarm on the earth, in the air, in the waters. In Psa 104:28, it is, They are filled with good. The meaning is essentially the same. Of course this is to be taken in a general sense. It cannot mean that absolutely no one ever needs, or ever perishes from want, but the idea is that of the amazing beneficence and fullness of God in being able and willing to satisfy such multitudes; to keep them from perishing by cold, or hunger, or nakedness. And, in fact, how few birds perish by hunger; how few of the infinite number of the inhabitants of the sea; how few animals that roam over deserts, or in vast plains; how few people; how few even of the insect tribes – how few in the world revealed by the microscope – the world beneath us – the innumerable multitudes of living things too small even to be seen by the naked eye of man!
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Psa 145:16
Thou openest Thine hand, and satisfiest the desire of every living thing.
The Creator ministering to the wants of His creation
How does the Almighty provide for His creatures?
I. Personally. Thou. The pseudosage ascribes the fruits of the earth to the elements and laws of Nature. But the Bible, which is true science, ascribes them to God. God has not left Nature, He is in it, the great Spirit in all the wheels of its machinery. There is a Personal God in personal action, in all Nature.
II. Easily. He has only to open His hand. There is no labour, no effort; simply Thou openest Thine hand. How easily God rolls ponderous globes and massive systems through immensity! To communicate good to His creatures is easy work to Him.
1. It is agreeable to His heart. He has not to struggle as we often do against inner propensions and habit in order to show kindness. It is a gratification to His benevolence.
2. It is nothing to His power. It costs Him no effort; the whole universe arose at first by His word.
III. Abundantly. And satisfiest the desire of every living thing–from the minutest to the largest, from the microscopic insect to the mighty archangel. (Homilist.)
Thanksgiving for harvest
I. The one great benefactor. He is named by David (verse 1) as his God and King; and such is Jehovah unto all His saints. Their Proprietor and Preserver, their Ruler and Portion in a gracious and peculiar sense. But in the text God is adored as good to all, the one great Benefactor of every living thing. We do not forget that the support which God vouchsafes unto all, and the supplies which He grants to every living thing are not direct and immediate. These, in many instances, reach the creatures through the intervention of numerous channels, various agencies and instrumentalities. God does not now, as of old, rain bread upon the earth–and neither while preserving man or beast in His precious grace is the hand of the Lord seen, or His voice heard, or His glory visible. Still, He Himself is the one great benefactor of all flesh, of every living thing. In Him our breath is, and His are all our ways.
II. The multitude and variety of the dependents. Every living thing. Yes, the king in his palace, and the spider which shares the chamber with the monarch; the old man, staff in hand from very age, and the infant smiling on its mothers lap; the mariner in his ship in the midst of the sea, and the ploughman with his oxen in the peaceful valley; the senators in their council-hall, and the birds singing in the branches of the forest; the rich man feasting in his mansion, and the sheep which stray on its lawns; the cattle upon a thousand hills; the poor blind man begging his bread from door to door, the faithful dog which guides his sightless steps,–toward all these, and multitudes greater far, and in varieties more perplexing still, does our God open His hand and satisfy the desire!
III. The freeness and liberality of the gifts. Thou openest Thine hand. No doubt in the course of Providence there are seasons of famine or of scarcity. We are to have the poor always with us, and we discover constant instances of poverty or destitution. There have been years that the locust did eat, and the canker worm, and the caterpillar, and the palmer worm–Gods great army which He sends against us. Even mid the joy of this plentiful harvest we have to lament blight and failure in a portion of the produce of the earth. These, however, are exceptional seasons, and, as judgment is Gods strange works, as these occur they are to be regarded as reproofs for sin, meant to instruct the earth in righteousness, and that man having cleanness of teeth appointed him may be taught his weakness, and turn unto the Lord.
IV. The satisfaction which the gifts afford. Thou satisfiest the desire of every living thing. Is it any comfort, is it any relief to us to obscure the perfections of the one great Benefactor, and to conceal His administration in all the earth, to say that the satisfying of the desire of every living thing is the effect of natural laws, the order of the earth; and that while it remaineth seed-time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease? Thus may speak philosophy falsely so called, and with such crude and false reasoning many may be content. Natural laws, and the order of the earth, forsooth! Who ordained these laws, and who keeps them in operation? Who appointed that order, and preserves it from derangement or disturbance? Revelation teaches us to ascribe all this to God. Reason is fully satisfied only when admitting His dominion in the universe. (John Smart, D. D.)
The Satisfier of all desires
(with verse 19):–You observe the recurrence, in these two verses, of the one emphatic word desire. Its repetition evidently shows that the psalmist wishes to run a parallel between Gods dealings in two regions. The same beneficence works in both. Here is the true extension of natural law to the spiritual world.
I. Two kinds of pensioners.
1. Every living thing. Life makes a claim on God, and whatever desires arise in the living creature by reason of its life, God would be untrue to Himself, a cruel Parent, an unnatural Father if He did not satisfy them. He is a faithful Creator; and wherever there is a creature that He has made to need anything, He has hereby said, As I live, that creature shall have what it wants.
2. Then take the other class, them that fear Him; or, as they are described in the context–by contrast with the wicked who are destroyed–the righteous. That is to say, whilst, because we are living things, like the bee and the worm, we have a claim on God precisely parallel with theirs for what we may need by reason of His gift, which we never asked for–His gift of life–we shall have a similar but higher claim on Him if we are they that fear Him–with that loving reverence which has no torment in it,–and that love Him with that reverential affection which has no presumption in it, and whose love and fear coalesce in making them long to be righteous, like the object of their love, to be holy like the object of their fear. It comes to this–wherever you find in people a confidence which grows with their love of God, be sure that there is, somewhere or other in the universe of things, that which answers it.
II. Two sets of needs. The first of them is very easily disposed of. The eyes of all wait upon Thee, and Thou givest them their meat. That is all. Feed the beast, and give it the other things necessary for its physical existence, and there is no more to be done. But there is more wanted for the desires of the men that love and fear God. These are glanced at in the context, He also will hear their cry, and will save them; The Lord preserveth all them that love Him. That is to say, there are deeper needs in our hearts and lives than any that are known amongst the lower creatures. Evils, dangers, inward and outward; sorrows, disappointments, losses of all sorts shadow our lives in a fashion which the happy, careless life of field and forest knows nothing about. What is the object of desire to a man that loves God? God. What is the object of desire to a man that fears Him? God. What is the object of desire to a righteous man? Righteousness. And these are the desires which God is sure to fulfil to us. Therefore, there is only one religion in which it is safe and wise to cherish longings, and it is the region of the spiritual life where God imparts Himself. Everywhere else there will be disappointments–thank Him for them. Nowhere else is it absolutely true that that He will fulfil the desires of them that fear Him. But in this region it is. Whatever any of us want to have of God we are sure to get. We open our mouths and He fills them. In the Christian life desire is the measure of possession, and to long is to have. And there is nowhere else where it is absolutely, unconditionally, and universally true that to wish is to possess, and to ask is to have.
III. Two forms of appeal. The eyes of all wait upon Thee. That is beautiful! The dumb look of the unconscious creature, like that of a dog looking up in its masters face for a crust, makes appeal to God, and He answers that. But a dumb, unconscious look is not for us. He also will hear their cry. Put your wish into words if you want it answered; not for His information, but for your strengthening.
IV. The two processes of satisfying. Thou openest Thine hand. That is enough. But God cannot satisfy our deepest desire by any such short and easy method. There is a great deal more to be done by Him before the aspirations of love, and fear, and longing for righteousness can be fulfilled. He has to breathe Himself into us. Gods best gifts cannot be separated from Himself. They are Himself, and in order to satisfy the desires of them that fear Him there is no way possible, even to Him, but the impartation of Himself to the waiting heart. He has to discipline us for His highest gifts, in order that we may receive them. And sometimes He has to do that, as I have no doubt He has done it with many of us, by withholding or withdrawing, the satisfaction of some of our lower desires, and so emptying our hearts and turning the current of our wishes from earth to heaven. Not only has He to give us Himself, and to discipline us in order to receive Him, but He has put all His gifts which meet our deepest desires into a great storehouse. He does not open His hand and give us peace and righteousness, and growing knowledge of Himself, and closer union, and the other blessings of the Christian life, but He gives us Jesus Christ. We are to find all these blessings in Him, and it depends upon us whether we find them or not, and how much of them we find. Expand your desires to the width of Christs great mercies; for the measure of our wishes is the limit of our possession. He has laid up the supply of all our need in the storehouse, which is Christ; and He has given us the key. Let us see to it that we enter in. Ye have not because ye ask not. To him that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Satisfieth:
It is Gods own word. It is not in the worlds vocabulary, much less in the devils. This, too, is loves word. Love is never satisfied until there is a perfect satisfaction. So, then, here is the salvation of our wishes. Nurse your aspirations, encourage your desires. They cannot be too great since God waits to satisfy them. Wishing is not an idle folly when we bring our wishes to God. Then our desires do become pure prophecies; the whispers of Gods love to the soul. Be not afraid of your desires; let the soul be thrilled with the thought of heroism, adventure, nobility, grand deeds grandly done. Take these to God, for He hath need of them, and He knows how to turn these wishes to account. This is the very meaning of our salvation, to turn the idle poetry of our wishes into solid fact that blesses men. It is to inspire the very loftiest longing and to fulfil that which He inspires that Jesus Christ has lived and died and risen in His resurrection power. Do you but give yourself right up to God, and no dream of good is there, no blessed vision of service but shall come to pass. He satisfieth the desire,–the desire of every living thing. (M. G. Pearse.)
All needs freely supplied
A man who engaged a passage on a coasting steamer was in straitened circumstances, and had but a small sum left when his ticket was paid for. Part of this he invested in bread and cheese, thinking the cabin fare too expensive for his limited means. After a while his bread tasted fiat and stale, and his cheese became hard and mouldy. To aggravate matters, he was obliged, three times a day, to inhale the odours from the cooks galley, and the delicious aromas drove him almost frantic. Finally, when within a days sail from the port of destination, he grew desperate. Seeing the steward bearing a huge platter with a turkey, he waylaid him at the entrance of the dining-saloon, and said: See here, I havent much money, but I have stood this thing as long as I can. How much will a dinner like that cost? Cost! exclaimed the steward; why, man, it dont cost you anything, its all paid for in your passage. Our God has made abundant provision for our welfare on the journey heavenward. We do not need to live on dry bread and mouldy cheese. He sets a rich table for all who trust Him. Christs command is: Eat and be filled.
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 16. Thou openest thine hand] What a hand is this that holds in it all the food that meets the desires and necessities of the universe of creatures! A very large volume might be written upon this: The proper kinds of food for the various classes of animals.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Or, as divers render it, and which is more agreeable to the order of the words in the Hebrew text, thou satisfiest every living thing with thy favour or good-will, i.e. with the fruits of thy bounty; the pronoun thy being easily and fitly understood out of the foregoing clause.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
Thou openest thine hand,…. Not of providence, but of grace, in which all things are, and from whence they come; and which the Lord opens liberally and bountifully, and gives out all things richly to enjoy; all things pertaining to life and godliness; grace here, with all the supplies of it, and glory hereafter:
and satisfiest the desire of every living thing; not of every savage creature; every lion, bear, wolf, c. for then there would be no living in some parts of the world: nor of every carnal, lustful, worldly, and covetous man who never say they have enough, or are ever satisfied: but of everyone that is made spiritually alive, quickened by the Spirit and grace of God; these desire spiritual things, spiritual food, more grace and more communion with God, and conformity to Christ; and these desires are before the Lord; and sooner or later they are satisfied, they have what they desire; especially this will be their case, when they awake in the divine likeness. The words may be rendered, “and satisfies every living one with that which is acceptable [with] favour” i; with good will; with lovingkindness; which is better than life: so Naphtali is said to be “satisfied with favour”,
De 33:23; as all living saints are or will be.
i “re acceptabili”, Gussetius, p. 803. “benedictione”, V. L. “beneplacito”, Piscator, Gejerus; “benevolentia”, Cocceius.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
16. Thou openest thine hand, etc. The figure is a beautiful one. Most men pass over without observation the singular goodness of God apparent in this admirable ordering of things in nature, and David therefore represents him as stretching out his hand to distribute to the animals their food. We sinfully confine our attention to the earth which yields us our food, or to natural causes. To correct this error David describes God as opening his hands to put the food into our mouths. The word רצון, ratson, some render desire, as though he meant that God supplied each kind of animal with food according to its wish. And a little afterwards we do indeed find it used in that sense. Others, however, refer it rather to God’s feeding them of his mere good pleasure and kindness; it not being enough to say that our food is given us by God, unless we add, as in the second clause of the verse, that his kindness is gratuitous, and that there is no extrinsic cause whatever moving him to provide so liberally for every living creature. In that case the cause is put for the effect; the various kinds of provision being effects of his good pleasure — χαρισματα της χάριτος. If it be found that men and others of his creatures often suffer and die from want, this is to be traced to the change which has come upon nature by sin. The fair order which subsisted in it by God’s original appointment often fails since the fall through our sins, and yet in what remains of it, though marred, we may see the kindness of God referred to by David, for in the severest failures of crop, there is no year so barren and unproductive, that God may not be said to open his hand in it.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
Psa 145:16 Thou openest thine hand, and satisfiest the desire of every living thing.
Ver. 16. Thou openest thy hand ] With kingly munificence.
And satisfiest the desire
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Psalms
THE SATISFIER OF ALL DESIRES
Psa 145:16
You observe the recurrence, in these two verses, of the one emphatic word ‘desire.’ Its repetition evidently shows that the Psalmist wishes to run a parallel between God’s dealings in two regions. The same beneficence works in both. Here is the true extension of natural law to the spiritual world. It is the same teaching to which our Lord has given immortal and inimitable utterance, when He says, ‘Your heavenly Father feedeth them.’ And so we are entitled to look on all the wonders of creation, and to find in them buttresses which may support the edifice of our faith, and to believe that wherever there is a mouth God sends food to fill it. ‘Thou openest Thine hand’-that is all-’and satisfiest the desire of every living thing.’ But to fulfil the desires of them who are not only ‘living things,’ but ‘who fear’ Him, is it such a simple task? Sometimes more is wanted than an open hand before that can be accomplished. So, looking not only at the words I have read, but at the whole of their setting, which is influenced by the thought of this parallelism, we see here two sets of pensioners, two kinds of wants, two forms of appeal, two processes of satisfaction.
I. Two kinds of pensioners.
Then, take the other class, ‘them that fear Him’; or as they are described in the context-by contrast with ‘the wicked who are destroyed’-’the righteous.’ That is to say, whilst, because we are living things, like the bee and the worm, we have a claim on God precisely parallel with theirs for what we may need by reason of His gift, which we never asked for, His gift of life, we shall have a similar but higher claim on Him if we are ‘they that fear Him’ with that loving reverence which has no torment in it, and that love Him with that reverential affection which has no presumption in it, and whose love and fear coalesce in making them long to be righteous like the Object of their love, to be holy like the Object of their fear. And just as the fact of physical life binds God to care for it, and to give all that is needed for its health, growth, blessedness, so the fact of man’s having in his heart the faintest tremor of reverential dread, the feeblest aspiration of outgoing affection, the most faltering desire after purity of life and conduct, binds God to answer these according to the man’s need. Of all incredibilities in the world, there is nothing more incredible, because there is nothing more contrary to the very depths of the divine nature, than that desires, longings, expectations, which are the direct result of the love and fear of God, and the hunger and thirst after righteousness, should not be answered.
Now that is a very wide principle, and I do not believe that it is trusted enough by many. It comes to this-wherever you find in people a confidence which grows with their love of God, be sure that there is, somewhere or other in the universe of things, that which answers it.
Take a case. If there was not a word in the New Testament about Jesus Christ’s resurrection, the fact that just in proportion as men grow in devotion, in love of God, in fear of Him, in longing to be good and to appear like Him, in that same proportion does their conviction that there must be a life beyond the grave become firm and certain-that fact would be enough to make any one who believed in God sure that the hope thus rooted in love to Him, and fed by everything that draws us nearer to Him, could not be a delusion, nor be destined to be left unfulfilled.
And we might go round the whole circle of dim religious aspirations and desires, and find in all of them illustrations of the principle so profoundly and so simply put in our psalm, that the same Love which, in the realm of the physical world, binds itself to satisfy the life which it imparts, is at work in the higher regions, and will ‘fulfil the desires of them that fear Him.’
II. Again, there are two sets of needs.
‘He will save them.’ Now, I do not suppose that ‘save’ here is employed in its full New Testament sense, but it approximates to that sense. And, further, there are other aspects of our needs set forth in the context, on which I briefly touch. Do not let us vulgarise such a saying as this of my text, ‘He will fulfil the desire of them that fear Him,’ as if it only meant that if a man fears God he may set his longing upon any outward thing, and be sure to get it. There is nothing so poor, so unworthy as that promised in Scripture. For one thing, it is not true; for another, it would not be good if it were. The way to spoil children is not the way to perfect saints; and to give them what they want because they want it, is the sure way to spoil children of all ages. We may be quite certain that our heavenly Father is not going to do that. The promise here means something far nobler and loftier. The fact of creation binds God to supply all the wants which spring from life. The fact of our loving and fearing Him binds Him to supply all the wants which spring from our love and fear. And it is these desires which the Psalmist is thinking of.
What is the object of desire to a man who loves God? God. What is the object of desire to a man who fears Him? God. What is the object of desire to a righteous man? Righteousness. And these are the desires which God is sure to fulfil to us. Therefore, there is only one region in which it is safe and wise to cherish longings, and it is the region of the spiritual life where God imparts Himself. Everywhere else there will be disappointments-thank Him for them. Nowhere else is it absolutely true that He will ‘fulfil the desires of them that fear Him.’ But in this region it is. Whatever any of us desire to have of God, we are sure to get. We open our mouths and He fills them. In the Christian life desire is the measure of possession, and to long is to have. And there is nowhere else where it is absolutely, unconditionally, and universally true that to wish is to possess, and to ask is to have.
Oh! then, is it not a foolish thing for us to worry and torture and sweat, in order to win for ourselves for a little while the uncertain possession of incomplete bliss? Would it not be wiser, instead of letting the current of our desires dribble itself away through a thousand channels in the sand and get lost, to gather it all into one great stream which is sure to find its way to the broad ocean? ‘Delight thyself in the Lord, and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart,’ for these will then be after Himself, and Himself only.
III. Further, there are here two forms of appeal.
Let us remember, dear brethren! that the condition of our getting the higher gifts is not only that we should love and fear, and in the silence of our own hearts should wish for, but that we should definitely ask for, them. Not only desire, but ‘their cry,’ brings the answer.
IV. And now one last word. Note the two processes of satisfying.
That is a mystery deep and blessed. Oh, that we may all know, by our own living experience, what it is to have not only the gifts which drop from His hands, but the gifts which cannot be parted from Him, the Giver! He has to discipline us for His highest gifts, in order that we may receive them. And sometimes He has to do that, as I have no doubt He has done it with many of us, by withholding or withdrawing the satisfaction of some of our lower desires, and so emptying our hearts and turning the current of our wishes from earth to heaven. If you are going to pour precious wine into a chalice, you begin by emptying out the less valuable liquid that may be in it. So God often empties us, in order that He may fill us, and takes away the creatures in order that we may long for the Creator.
Not only has He to give us Himself, and to discipline us in order to receive Him, but He has to put all His gifts which meet our deepest desires into a great storehouse. He does not open His hand and give us peace and righteousness, and growing knowledge of Himself, and closer union, and the other blessings of the Christian life, but He gives us Jesus Christ. We are to find all these blessings in Him, and it depends upon us whether we find them or not, and how much of them we find. You will always find as much in Christ as you want, but you may not find nearly as much in Him as you could; and you will never find as much in Him as there is. God sends His Son, and in that one gift, like a box ‘wherein sweets compacted lie,’ are all the gifts that even His hand can bestow, or our desires require. So be sure that you have what you have, and that you suck out of the Rose of Sharon all the honey that lies deep in its calyx. Expand your desires to the width of Christ’s great mercies; for the measure of our wishes is the limit of our possession. He has laid up the supply of all our need in the storehouse, which is Christ; and He has given us the key. Let us see to it that we enter in. ‘Ye have not because ye ask not.’ ‘To him that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance.’
END OF VOL. II.
Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren
Thou. This is emphatic in Sept, Syriac, and Vulgate. Compare Psa 104:26.
hand. Figure of speech Anthropopatheia. App-6.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
The Good Providence of God
Thou openest thine hand,
And satisfiest the desire of every living thing.Psa 145:16
Surely a delightful psalma psalm of great rejoicing for Gods goodness to mans weakness; of the Lords being nigh, very near to us; of His abundant kindness, of His power and glory, of His open hand, of His feeding the hungry. Surely a psalm to make glad the heart; a song for Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery torment of the fiery furnace; a song for every living thing because the Lord, the Lord God is with us. O, all ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord: praise Him, and magnify Him for ever! He openeth His hand and satisfieth the desire of every living thing.
I
Gods Pensioners
Every living thing.
Life makes a claim on God, and whatever desires arise in the living creature by reason of its life, God would be untrue to Himself, a cruel Parent, an unnatural Father, if He did not satisfy them. We do not half enough realize the fact that the condescension of creation lies not only in the act of creating, but in the willing acceptance by the Creator of the bonds under which He thereby lays Himself, obliging Himself to see to the creatures that He has chosen to make.
1. Gods pensioners! How did He treat them when He walked with them and talked with them in the days of His earthly life? There was a day when the disciples came in the wilderness to Jesus, saying, This is a desert place, and now the time is far passed: send them [the multitudes] away, that they may go into the country round about, and into the villages, and buy themselves bread. Four thousand men besides women and children was a great family to provide for anywhere, and in such a place as this it would never occur to the disciples that their need could be supplied. Send them awayit was a perfectly natural suggestion. Let them go and get their supper, for they are hungry and it is getting late. And Jesus answered and said unto them, Give ye them to eat. The disciples looked up in wonderwhat did the Master mean? Should they go and buy two hundred pennyworth of bread? Where was the money to come from? And where should they find so much bread to buy? It was trouble enough at best to find bread for wife and little ones at home; but here in the desert who could spread a table for ten thousand hungry guests? Give ye them to eat. It was the voice of God. It was with the consciousness of Divine power that the command was given. It was the impulse of the great bounty that fed the world, the easy familiarity of One who was accustomed to open His hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing.
2. Every living thing. What a family is this to be provided for, each with its separate mystery of life, each with life to be sustained, each to be adapted to the light and air, and the subtle influences upon which life depends!
(1) Shall we go into the primeval forest and think of the creatures that roam in its depths? Shall we stand and let the procession pass before us?
If the forest has attractions for the huntsman, how much more interesting it must be to the naturalist. What one who has delighted the world for over fifty years thought of the Guiana forest may be seen in Watertons Wanderings. The enthusiasm of the Yorkshire squire has probably never been surpassed. To him the forest was something more than the awful solitude which is the first impression it makes on a strangerit was full of life. The painter sees patches of colour in the landscape, but the naturalist recognizes the objects which make up the scene. On the sand-reef he distinguishes the footsteps of a jaguar and the remains of his dinner, and can picture what has taken place in the night. A peccary left her hole in a hollow tree at nightfall to feed under the saouari-nut trees. She is quietly cracking the shells and munching the oily kernels, when the great cat suddenly pounces upon her, and she is torn to pieces and eaten. Sitting on a hollow tree beside the creek, the naturalist sees a thousand flowers and fruits floating down the stream. Now he distinguishes a palm nut snatched under the water by a great fish, or a shoal of small fry feeding on the yellow hog-plums which are so conspicuous against the dark water. Now there is a splash as an alligator comes out of the thicket and dives under, to come up again some distance away, hardly distinguishable except to a trained eye. This reminds us of the protective coloration of every living thing in the forest. Protective contrivances are found in every forest animal. Snakes are nearly invisible in the gloom, notwithstanding their brilliant colours when played upon by the sunlight. With so few atmospheric changes it might be supposed that the tropical forest would give rise to little variation in animals and plants, yet, on the contrary, it is here that nature runs riot, as it were. Nature has been lavish with her gifts. The forest is densely populatedmore so, in fact, than any city ever was or could be. There is not room for one in a thousand of the children born therein, so that the fight for standing room is like that of a crowd at a fte. It follows, therefore, that every possible contrivance to gain a position has been developed, and the result is almost perfection. Every living thing is ever moving forward, working towards an end which is unattainableperfection. But, although this object will never be achieved, the results of the struggle bring it continually a little nearer, and therefore cannot be otherwise than good. Nature does not take care of the weaklings, she provides no asylums; if some of her creatures cannot work for a living they must make room for those who can. Individuals are of little consequence as such, but nevertheless as links in the endless chain they are of the greatest importance. Guiana is pre-eminently a land of forest and stream, and it has followed that both animal and vegetable kingdoms have been developed to suit these conditions. Some are equally at home on land, in the water, or on the trees, those that cannot easily live in the flood being able to climb out of its reach. Then we must also take into account the kinds of food procurable. The interdependence of one animal on another, and these again upon the seeds of trees and even on flowers, is so close, that we can hardly conceive of their existing apart.1 [Note: J. Rodway, In the Guiana Forest, 31.]
(2) Shall we consider the fowls of the air, again a myriad form: the eagle soaring in its height, the birds that fill the woods and valleys with their song, the great hosts of sea-fowl? Who can think of their numbers?
From Cannara Francis went farther south, and east to Bevagna. Brother Leo was his companion, and the sympathy between them, the beauty of the ways bordered with flowersamongst them the delicate blue and white love-in-a-mist, which fringes the hedgerows in June, blue cornflowers, rose-coloured vetches, purple loose-strife, scarlet poppies, gay larkspurs and sheets of feathery bedstrawthe twitter of birds upon the trees, the fields ripe to the harvest, refreshed and uplifted his heart, so that his joy welled over in song. Where the birds gathered he paused, and, unalarmed, they clustered about his feet and on the branches overhead. In an ecstasy of tenderness for his little brothers he spoke to them of their Creator, whose care for them deserved their love and praise. For He has made you, he said, the noblest of His creatures; He has given you the pure air for a home: you need neither to sow nor to reap, for He cares for you, He protects you, He leads you whither you should go. And the birds rejoiced at his words, opening their wings and fluttering and chirping as if to thank him for rating them so precious in Gods sight. Then moving amongst them, he blessed them and went on his way.1 [Note: A. M. Stoddart, Francis of Assisi, 134.]
(3) Shall we go outside them to the world of plant life? What endless diversity is here in the grass of the meadow, the corn of the field, the crowded hedgerow, the tangled copse, the leafy forest, the mossy rocks, the weeds that hide beneath the sea, the flowers that fill the earth with beauty and the air with fragrance, the great trees festooned with creepers!
The whole science of flowers to the thoughtful mind in these days is full to the brim of the most delightful and suggestive poetry. And how much better fitted is it now than ever before for the illustration of moral and religious truth! Science has anointed our blind eyes with its own magic eye-salve, and enabled us indeed to see men as trees walking. We see our own human nature reflected in the nature of the flowers of the field in a previously unknown way. We see the analogue of the mothers bosom in the milky substance of the two cotyledons of the seed for the primary nourishing of the young embryo which they contain. We see the lovers joy in the spring blossoming of the flowers, and the loveliness with which Nature then adorns her bridal bower; and we see our own selfishness in the spreading of the flat leaves of the daisy around its roots close to the earth, so that no other plant may grow beside it, and it may get whatever space and air and sunshine it needs for its own development. He who considers the lilies how they grow, in the manner in which recent science teaches us, and in the light which modern investigation has shed upon their marvels and mysteries, will learn lessons which will make him wiser and better. It has been suggestively said that the flower is the type of the universe, and the lily of the field is solving over again all problems. It is not perfect creation, complete all at once, that we see, but God sowing seeds, making things to grow by outside circumstances and living forces within; slow, gradual evolution from the nebula to the full-orbed star, and from the chaotic star to the skilfully ordered and richly furnished earth, fit to be mans dwelling-place, and the scene of probation for immortal souls.1 [Note: Hugh Macmillan, The Poetry of Plants, 9.]
II
Gods Open Hand
Thou openest thine hand.
Now look from nature to natures GodThou openest thine hand, and satisfiest the desire of every living thing. God satisfies the desires of every living thing. Our desires both lift us up and set us down. Our desires mark us off from all other living creatures. Where others have needs only, ours is this dignitywe desire.
1. Desireit is a dainty word. It were much that He should satisfy the need, the want; but He goes far beyond that. Pity is moved to meet our need; duty may sometimes look after our wants; but to satisfy the desire implies a tender watchfulness, a sweet and gracious knowledge of us, an eagerness to bless. God is never satisfied until He has satisfied our desires.
Embodied life is ever seeking, and it must find, whether embodied or disembodied. From the amba to the archangel all forms and modes of life are on their way towards satiety; everything must reach its due fulfilment, though probably not on this plane; it would be a poor destiny that could complete itself on earth. One wonders what the destiny of the lower creation is; but we may rest assured
That not a worm is clovn in vain;
That not a moth with vain desire
Is shrivelld in a fruitless fire,
Or but subserves anothers gain.1 [Note: R. J. Campbell.]
(1) What is the object of desire to a man who loves God? God. What is the object of desire to a righteous man? Righteousness. And these are the desires which God is sure to fulfil to us. Therefore there is only one region in which it is safe and wise to cherish longings, and it is the region of the spiritual life where God imparts Himself. Everywhere else there will be disappointmentsthank Him for them. Nowhere else is it absolutely true that He will fulfil our desires. But in this region it is. Whatever any of us desire to have of God, we are sure to get. We open our mouths and He fills them. In the Christian life desire is the measure of possession, and to long is to have. And there is nowhere else where it is absolutely, unconditionally and universally true that to wish is to possess, and to ask is to have. There is, however, an eternal element in all desire, which, ultimately, will find its fruition in the love of God.
Dear children, ye ought not to cease from hearing or declaring the word of God because you do not alway live according to it, nor keep it in mind. For inasmuch as you love it and crave after it, it will assuredly be given unto you; and you shall enjoy it for ever with God, according to the measure of your desire after it. St. Bernard has said: Man, if thou desirest a noble and holy life, and unceasingly prayest to God for it, if thou continue constant in this thy desire, it will be granted unto thee without fail, even if only in the day or hour of thy death; and if God should not give it thee then, thou shalt find it in Him in eternity: of this be assured. Therefore do not relinquish your desire, though it be not fulfilled immediately, or though ye may swerve from your aspirations, or even forget them for a time. It were a hard case if this were to cut you off for ever from the end of your being. But when ye hear the word of God, surrender yourselves wholly to it, as if for eternity, with a full purpose of will to retain it in your mind and to order your life according to it; and let it sink down right deep into your heart as into an eternity. If afterward it should come to pass that you let it slip, and never think of it again, yet the love and aspiration which once really existed live for ever before God, and in Him ye shall find the fruit thereof; that is, to all eternity it shall be better for you than if you had never felt them.1 [Note: Taulers Life and Sermons (trans. by S. Winkworth), 294.]
(2) The thing we desire in every object of desire is greater than we know; it is greater than the object itself as that object now is. God enlarges our soul by means of the desire, and will give us vision by and by of the wonder and glory of the reality of which we have all the time been in search, though only dimly knowing what it was. The souls desires are not illusory and ephemeral; they are in essence spiritual and Divine, though we so often misdirect and degrade them.
The desire after God does not begin on our part. God has not hidden Himself from man for the purpose that He might allow His creature, His lost child, to cry after Him. We love God because He first loved us. If we desire God, it is because God hath first desired us. God asks for our heart as His tabernacle; He surrounds us night and day with tender, pathetic appeals: He says, If any man love me, I will come in, and make my abode in his heart. He plies us, as mother never plied her prodigal child, to come home again; and there is not one word of grace, or pathos, or tender entreaty, which He has withheld from His argument, if haply He might find His way, with our glad consent, into our heart of hearts. Do you desire God? It is because God first desired you. Do you feel kindlings of love towards Him? Your love is of yesterday. His love comes up from unbeginning time, and goes on to unending eternity!2 [Note: Joseph Parker.]
2. Thou openest thine hand.What does this bring home to us? Does it not in the first place set forth the marvellous liberality of God? This means that Gods creatures do not wait upon Him in vain. He does not disappoint their need and their expectation. When the due season comes, His hand opens to fill their hearts with food and gladness. He does not give grudgingly or sparingly, but with full and open hand. Nor does He trim and carve His gifts according to the measure of our merit. If He were to do that we should fare badly, for we have all been undutiful children. He even gives us freely when we deserve not His goodness but His condemnation.
(1) Thou openest thine hand. That is enough. But God cannot satisfy our deepest desires by any such short and easy method. There is a great deal more to be done by Him before the aspirations of love and fear and longing for righteousness can be fulfilled. He has to breathe Himself into us. Lower creatures have enough when they have the meat that drops from His hand. They know and care nothing for the hand that feeds. But Gods best gifts cannot be separated from Himself. They are Himself, and in order to satisfy the desire of every living thing there is no way possible, even to Him, but the impartation of Himself to the waiting heart.
What means it to have a God, or what is God? The answer is: God is one from whom we expect all good, and in whom we can take refuge in all our needs, so that to have God is nothing else than to trust and believe in Him with all our hearts; as I have often said, that trust and faith of the heart alone make both God and Idol. If the faith and trust are right, then thy God is also the right God, and, again, if thy trust is false and wrong, then thou hast not the right God. For the two, faith and God, hold close together.1 [Note: Luther, The Greater Catechism.]
(2) But we have to put our desires into words before God can satisfy them. Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him. What then? Why should we ask Him? Because the asking will clear our thoughts about our desires. It will be a very good test of them. There are many things that we all wish, which we should not much like to put into our prayers, not because of any foolish notion that they are too small to find a place there, but because of an uncomfortable suspicion that perhaps they are not the kind of things that we ought to wish. And if we cannot make the desire into a cry, the sooner we make it dead as well as dumb the better for ourselves. The cry will serve, too, as a stimulus to the wishes which are put into words. Silent prayer is well, but there is a wonderful power on ourselvesit may be due to our weakness, but still it existsin the articulate and audible utterance of our petitions to God.
The sweetest and the best talent that God gives to any man or woman in this world is the talent of prayer. And the best usury that any man or woman brings back to God when He comes to reckon with them at the end of this world is a life of prayer. And those servants best put their Lords money to the exchangers who rise early and sit late, as long as they are in this world, ever finding out and ever following after better and better methods of prayer, and ever forming more secret, more steadfast, and more spiritually fruitful habits of prayer: till they literally pray without ceasing, and till they continually strike out into new enterprises in prayer, and new achievements, and new enrichments. It was this that first drew me to Teresa. It was her singular originality in prayer and her complete captivity to prayer. It was the time she spent in prayer, and the refuge, and the peace, and the sanctification and the power for carrying on hard and unrequited work that she all her life found in prayer. It was her fidelity and her utter surrender of herself to this first and last of all her religious duties, till it became more a delight, and, indeed, more an indulgence, than a duty. With Teresa it was prayer first, and prayer last, and prayer always. With Teresa literally all things were sanctified, and sweetened, and made fruitful by prayer.1 [Note: A. Whyte, Santa Teresa, 18.]
(3) When we are ready, then, to receive Gods satisfying bounty we will bring all our desires before His throne, and their fulfilment will surely come to pass. All that our heart has ever craved of the beautiful and good, but which we have never had; all we have ever longed for and have never reached; all that has been taken from us that was dear and precious to our souls and to the loss of which we have never become reconciled; all we have ever wanted without being able to win, though we have tried hard and earnestly so to do; all we have ever won and been unable to keep, or have kept only to find that the joy we expected in it has never been oursin all these we have been seeking something which is waiting for us in the hands of God, and He will not fail to give it us when we are ready to receive it.
And the amazing thing is that God more than satisfies our desires. His bounty is so great that many are unwilling to take His greatest gifts. For He has given His only-begotten and well-beloved Son, and how many refuse Him! How foolish it is to take Gods lesser gifts and refuse the greatest of all! The man in Bunyans Pilgrims Progress gathering the straws with the muckrake and neglecting the crown above his head is a fit picture of such un-wisdom. Let us not follow his miserable example, but rather, while we receive with thankfulness all the good that God gives us for the body, accept with equal readiness the Gift He has provided for the soul.
Work we may, seek and strive, and we are all bidden do this; but in the end it is not our doing. It is not the need we feel of Christ which saves us. It is Christ, and He is a gift. If He did not place Himself before us, we could never see Him. He puts Himself in our hands. Unless we can grasp Him there, we shall never grasp Him anywhere. He lies, like treasure, at our feet; if we do not find Him there, we shall never find Him anywhere. He lies, like the pearl, under our eyes: if we do not see Him there, we shall never see Him anywhere.1 [Note: R. W. Barbour, Thoughts, 99.]
Literature
Aitchison (J.), The Childrens Own, 219.
Archibald (M. G.), Sundays at the Royal Military College, 73.
Kelman (J.), Ephemera Eternitatis, 332.
Ketcham (W. E.), in Thanksgiving Sermons, 288.
Maclaren (A.), Expositions: Psalms 51145, 385.
Matheson (G.), Sacred Songs, 49.
Pearse (M. G.), The Gospel for the Day, 179.
Voysey (C.), Sermons, xiii. (1890), No. 48.
Wilkinson (J. B.), Mission Sermons, i. 95.
Christian World Pulpit, lxxxiii. 385 (R. J. Campbell).
Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible
openest: Psa 104:28, Psa 107:9, Psa 132:15, Job 38:27
Reciprocal: Gen 1:29 – to you Gen 1:30 – General Gen 6:21 – General Job 38:39 – Wilt Job 39:8 – General Psa 33:5 – earth Psa 50:12 – fulness Psa 104:11 – They give Psa 104:14 – causeth Psa 104:27 – General Psa 146:7 – which giveth food Psa 147:9 – General Joe 2:22 – afraid Jon 4:11 – and also Mat 6:26 – the fowls Mar 6:42 – General Mar 7:28 – yet Mar 8:8 – and were Luk 12:6 – and Luk 12:24 – the ravens Act 14:17 – in that 1Co 9:9 – Doth