Benjamin Franklin, like many of the leading thinkers of his time, liked to compare God to a clockmaker. God was a master craftsman. He skillfully formed the many precision parts of creation. Like the clockmaker, he assembled his ingenious machine, each piece carefully assembled, balanced and put it in its proper place. He then wound it up and set it in motion. He then left it alone, only rarely touching it to clean it. God, Franklin thought, was watching us — from a distance.
While God is indeed a great craftsman, he is not distant at all. The Scripture tells us he is involved in every detail of our lives. He maintains the distance between Sun and Earth with precision. He controls the seasons, rains and all its rhythms. His providence gives us all we have and need to live and enjoy our lives. Some it he does directly, others using the people, things and creatures in this world. He even contains the evil our sins let loose in this world.
We tend not to notice all these ordinary miracles and are tempted to believe our blessings come from our own efforts. When things do not go well, we then blame God as if he doesn’t care about us. We can’t comprehend that God can permit sin and evil in the world without being its cause. This is another of the mysteries that we run into when we try to understand our creator.
This is why it is good to build thanksgiving to God into our daily lives, when we wake, when we eat, when we worship and when sleep. Most especially it is good to thank him for his mercy in Christ Jesus.
See Also: What’s a Creed, Anyway? | The Three Ways God Cares for Us | Calling God our Father and Meaning it | God Can Do Anything He Wants to Do | God Mad Me and All Creatures | God’s Masks | Understanding an Unknowable God
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