In His Hands

Welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread. My name is Mike Whitmer and I entitled our reading, In His Hands. William Shatner played Captain Kirk on the television series Star Trek, but he was unprepared for a real trip into space. He called his 11 minute suborbital flight, the most profound experience I can imagine. He stepped out of his rocket and marveled, to see the blue color go right by you, and now you're staring into blackness.

That's the thing. You look down and there's the blue down there and the black up there. He added, the beauty of that color, and it's so thin, and you're through it in an instant.

Our planet is a blue dot, surrounded by utter darkness. It's unsettling. Shatner said that flying from blue sky into blackness was like flying into death. In an instant you go, whoa, that's death.

That's what I saw. It was so moving to me. This experience, it's something unbelievable.

Shatner's shattering flight puts life in perspective. We're small objects in the universe, yet we're loved by the One who created light and separated it from the darkness. Our Father knows where the darkness resides in the path to its dwelling. He laid the earth's foundation while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy. Let's trust our small lives to the God who holds the whole universe in His hands. Today's Our Daily Bread devotional scripture reading is from Job chapter 38 verses 4 through 21. Who shut up the sea behind doors when it burst forth from the womb, when I made the clouds its garment and wrapped it in thick darkness, when I fixed limits for it and set its doors and bars in place, when I said, This far you may come and no farther?

Here is where your proud waves halt. Have you ever given orders to the morning or shown the dawn its place, that it might take the earth by the edges and shake the wicked out of it? The earth takes shape like clay under a seal.

Its features stand out like those of a garment. The wicked are denied their light and their upraised arm is broken. Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea or walked in the recesses of the deep? Have the gates of death been shown to you? Have you seen the gates of the deepest darkness? Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth? Tell me if you know all this. What is the way to the abode of light? And where does darkness reside? Can you take them to their places?

Do you know the paths to their dwellings? Surely you know, for you were already born. You have lived so many years. Let's pray. Father, you rule this world and all that lies beyond. We trust your powerful love. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Thanks for listening. Today's encouragement was provided by Our Daily Bread Ministries.