You, O Lord, have given people dominion over the works of Your hands; You have put all things under their feet.

Psalm 8: 6

 

Wow! Do you get a sense of the power that is granted to us by God? We humans are granted total authority and absolute rule over the rest of His creation. This seems to suggest that God trusts us greatly; yet, based upon the way that we have behaved in regards to taking care of this planet and upon the lack of success that many of us have had in handling even the smallest details of ruling our immediate worlds, I am left wondering about how God could have come to the conclusion that any of us are worthy of His trust.

 

I believe that the answer is found in the fact that God sees beyond past performance, and He anticipates the potential that He formed in each of us. This potential for godly understanding, for great wisdom, and for the courage to utilize these qualities in our daily lives is accessed only through a committed relationship with the Lord. As we allow Him to change our priorities to match His, and we seek to understand His heart so that we can follow His will, we are transformed. He changes us from being self-directed and focused individuals into the God-image bearing members of the Body of Christ that the Lord intends for us to be.

 

It is in this state of renewal that we become truly trustworthy stewards of the great and the wonderful gift of rule over God’s creative work. This involves an enormous responsibility, for the Lord tells us that we are charged with the continual work of defeating the effects of evil and decay in our world. We are to take every opportunity that we have to show people the light of God’s grace and redemption, and we need to seek to do this through every word that we say, each action that we do, and by the way that we live our lives. The Lord trusts you and He trusts me with all of His Creation, and He knows that, through and in Him, we are absolutely worthy of that trust.