Establish the Work of Our Hands – Week of October 18, 2021
May your deeds be shown to your servants, your splendor to their children. May the favor of the Lord our God rest on us; establish the work of our hands for us—yes, establish the work of our hands.
Psalm 90:16-17
ECME Devotion October 18, 2021
See series: ECME Devotions
In the front of Christian Worship, the hymnal, you’ll find a simple Morning Devotion on page 152. The opening words are as follows:
God, our Father, each day is a gift of your grace.
Your mercies are new every morning.
What beautiful reminders these words are at the beginning of a new day. Yesterday is done but the remnants, especially our failures, hurtful words, impatience, apathy, can linger and build day after day. We can begin each day with the burden of sins behind us by God’s gift of forgiveness. What a comfort these words are for the repentant sinner in you and in me. Today is another day of God’s grace-his forgiveness that we don’t deserve but that he freely gives. His mercies, unlike our own patience and mercy with others, never runs out. It is new each and every day.
Beginning today and each day with those reminders can be wrapped in the prayer we find in Psalm 90. Earlier in the Psalm, the writer expresses praise for the eternity of God but also describes the mortality of people. Our mortality is a result of sin but because of God’s eternity, he can be the dwelling place for all people of all generations. While we can do nothing to deserve each day of God’s grace, today’s verses ask for God’s mercy. We ask for God to give us each day not for ourselves, but for the opportunities to serve him. We ask him to use us, use our hands in our labors no matter what those may be, to glorify him, to reflect him, to share the astounding message of his grace and mercy to others.
As you begin a new day, reflect on the tasks before you. As you change a diaper, your words of kindness and love are nurturing a young soul. As you share a Bible story, you are helping plant seeds of faith in a small child. As you comfort an anxious child or forgive a disobedient young child, you are modeling and teaching God’s endless grace and love. As the Psalmist has shared, as you begin the tasks of the day, remember God’s mercies that are new each day and ask that God would establish the work of your hands that all you do may reflect him and bring him glory.
Prayer:
May the mind of Christ my Savior live in me from day to day,
By his love and pow’r inspiring all I do or say.
May I run the race before me, strong and brave to face the foe,
Looking only unto Jesus as I onward go.
May his spirit live within me as I seek the lost to win,
And may they forget the channel, seeing only him.
Christian Worship 467:1, 5, 6
A Question to Consider:
Ask someone to join you in a conversation about all you do each day. Together list some of the many tasks that are done each day and then identify how each one is an opportunity in your ministry to reflect and/or share Jesus.
