What is man?

My friend, Lisa and I were in our tent reading. We had taken our sons camping out in Glen Rose and had spent the day walking around the park, going to the river to see the dinosaur tracks and visiting the Creation Museum. All in all it had been a good day. It started to drizzle in the afternoon and began raining hard enough that we had to retreat to our tent where we spent the rest of the afternoon reading the books that we had purchased from the Creation Museum. These books were wonderful and brought out the beauty of God's creation, filling me with a deep sense of how awesome God is.
Eventually it became too dark to read so we just lay down on our pads. Derek and Ethan had already fallen asleep. Around 11:00pm that night a couple in the next tent started talking. They had actually been talking in the background the whole time we were in the tent but because we had been reading we hadn't been paying much attention. Now that we were ready to go to sleep, we couldn't help but hear them. That and the fact that they were getting loud.
It was obvious from their slurred speech and the content of their conversation that they had been on the razzle for awhile and now it was taking effect.
The couple was a man and a woman, maybe married or not, and they began to have an argument. It went something like this:
“You know you paid me a hundred dollars to -”
“I did not pay you a hundred dollars to-”
“Yesh you did! You wanen a pay me hunerd dollars to-”
“I di' no'. I ne'er ash you for hunner' dollarsh....!
This went on for what seemed like hours. As I lay there, a captive audience, listening to this drivel I began to think of God as the Author of creation.

When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers,
The moon and the stars,which You have ordained,
What is man that you are mindful of him?

I began to reflect how God, our Creator, has made our brains with such infinite complexity and man (some men) have chosen to drink themselves so incoherent that they can hardly string two or three words together to form a semi-cohesive sentence.

And the son of man that you visit him?

Then I got to thinking about others who don't kill off their brain cells with alcohol but never develop the potential of their minds out of intellectual laziness. They'd rather feed it with what I call “media baby pap” by what they read, watch on TV and listen to on the radio.


For You have made him a little lower than the angels
And You have crowned him with glory and honor.

And the busyness. So much running around there's no time to stop and reflect. No time for philosophy. How does the poem on my mother's refrigerator go?

No time, no time to study
to meditate or pray
yet much time for doing
in a fleshly, worldly way
No time for things eternal
But much for things of earth
Things important set aside
For things of little worth.
Some things, it's true are needful
But first things must come first
and what replaces God's own word
Of God it shall be cursed.

Being a childen's leader in BSF is exhausting. There's the 6:30am Leadership meetings on SATURDAY MORNINGS! (5:00am on Fridays once a month, like this week). And, of course, the Bible study itself on Monday evenings. Wow. What a commitment! God should be so grateful (tongue in cheek).
But then there are the rewards. The rich, ever deepening intimacy with the Creator of the heavens and the earth. And the development of my intellect. People don't talk about that, as though that shouldn't be an objective in our Christian living. Well, it may not be an objective but it certainly is a consequence of spending time sacrificially studying God's word, praying and fellowshipping with fellow Christians. God made our minds. He took delight in doing so. What He makes is good. Is it not both a privilege and a duty to glorify God through using all He's given us, including developing our ability to think on higher planes?

Dear God, I thank you for your generous gifts, including my mind. May I use it to the best of my ability according to Your will and purpose. In Jesus' name, Amen.
(Scripture: Psalms 8:3-5)