February is a month which primarily honors two American leaders. One birthed a nation, and the other reunited it, giving us today a still fairly strong 242 year old country, definitely gnarled and flawed by sin, but also a provable blessing to the world.
No one can deny that this country, in addition to the pain it may have caused others, has blessed a very significant part of the globe through sacrificing its own life blood to release millions from brutal oppression and loss of freedom. I am currently reading the massive World War II trilogy by Pulitzer Prize winning author Rick Atkinson. The war carnage of thousands upon thousands of American and British lives to free North Africans, Italians, numerous European nations, and so many others is horrific. This does not count the many, many Russian lives lost fighting the Nazis. Nor does it include all the American lives sacrificed in WWII to free the many Pacific area peoples from the vicious treatment and oppression by the Japanese. God raised up America to withstand the evils Satan foisted upon the world, evils that apart from God could very well have destroyed Earth’s civilization.
God uses men and women to assist in His direction of the affairs, fortunes, and/or misfortunes of those He created. As He directs the hearts of men and women, kings and queens, presidents and prime ministers in the direction He wills to bring about His sovereign purposes, He also directs your own life purposefully in a manner which you may not recognize, nor give Him credit for, nor think very significant in comparison to a Washington or Lincoln. But remember you are told He numbers the hairs of YOUR head and is aware of even a tiny sparrow falling to the ground; and how much are you more important than an “insignificant sparrow?
For what purpose then are you told of that which you might initially consider trivial? How many numbered hairs on heads are there in the world of all of history? How many sparrows, representing all birds in truth, populate the earth at any given time? Yet, as C.S Lewis declares in The Weight of Glory, there are truly no ordinary people in God’s eyes; or as Francis Schaeffer reveals in his book by the same name, there are “no little people in God’s mind.
Somehow, in the omniscient knowledge of God, these facts will not be buried in the minutia of it all. They may seem minutial to you, but they are most significant to God, otherwise He would not have told you so. You cannot grasp it, you can’t even imagine His capability nor His purposeful intent, nor even know why of all things you are significant to the God of the universe, but there is nothing ordinary about you!
Everyone knows of Washington’s and Lincoln’s birthdays, but who knows and celebrates yours? Well, maybe close friends and loved ones, but certainly not the world. Yet, the most important spectator – and so much more than spectator – of all is certainly aware and interested in you. God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit knows you, knows your day of birth, knows your day of death; and you, as an eternal, immortal creature are of great importance to Him.
Even when the population of the world from beginning to end numbers approximately (and I have no idea how they arrived at this) 102.8 billion. That is huge! Only God is capable of creating and having specific interest in every single one of 102 billion! The vital question for you is this: Is He as important to you?
You cannot understand nor make His interest in you a penetrating blessing securing your eternity unless He becomes known and loved by you. That will not happen unless you deem to approach Him alone through His Son Jesus Christ. If you think that is unfair or far too exclusive, then it is simply because you deny His own revealed plan, His authority, and the knowledge of who He is in truth: Almighty God. There isn’t any other!
You cannot live your life with little or no interest in the God who knows you far, far better than you know Him or know yourself. But do not ever, ever think you are a little, ordinary, insignificant person. There really are no such people! You may think so, but the opinion which counts is not yours. You are so important to Him that He literally knows how many hairs grow on your head. This is why He uses such as an example. He cares for you, and that care is the most precious thing about you. So make an avid, life-long pursuit of the knowledge of God and the love of Him; make it the greatest issue and endeavor of your life! Think seriously on this during the month of February and throughout the new year.
“Far, far above your thought, His counsel shall appear when fully He the work has wrought that caused you needless fear. Leave to His sovereign will to choose and to command; with wonder filled, you then shall own how wise, how strong His hand.
(4th verse of Paul Gerhardt’s hymn, “Commit Now All Your Griefs, 1653)
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