God’s Works Bring Joy

I was born in Scotland, and while I may be biased, I think our small nation is home to some of the most beautiful landscapes on the planet. I’ve been fortunate enough to travel to many places and I’ve seen some incredible things, but Scotland can hold its own with any of them in terms of breathtaking beauty. Whenever I get the chance to visit, one of my greatest pleasures is to get in a car and head into the Scottish Highlands. I’ll stop constantly to get out and gaze at the gorgeous scenery that just seems to get more magnificent around every bend. I look in amazement and say, as one great preacher put it, “Well done, God!”

The Psalmist sings for joy at God’s works, and no wonder. But the home God has given us on Planet Earth isn’t just beautiful, it’s one carefully prepared to nurture and provide for his most treasured creation, you and me.

I’m no scientist, but even a layman like me can look at the incredible fine-tuning of where our planet is in the solar system, the beneficial effects of the just-right positions of the moon and the sun, the location of our solar system in the Milky Way Galaxy and so many more factors that, were they even slightly different, would make advanced life on our planet impossible. I won’t even discuss the vast reaches of the universe itself, except to say that from its beginning until now, its development has been perfectly engineered for the benefit of human beings living right here, right now.

Of course, some will dismiss all this as mere coincidence, but there are just so many of those coincidences, all occurring at probabilities so low as to make it mathematically impossible for all this to have happened by mere chance. No, these are the incredible works of God, all designed for His specific purpose of providing a home for us, where we can enjoy not just His creation, but a relationship with the Creator Himself.

Look around you at the marvels of God’s works, take a stroll outside tonight and look up at the stars, and consider the vastness and complexity of the universe—a universe created just for us. In all this, know that none of these is His greatest work. That happened on Calvary, when His only Son paid the price for our sins and made the miracle of salvation possible. God has given us literally countless reasons today to follow the Psalmists example, and “sing for joy!”