Dave's Diary

For this final week of Advent 2023 our attention shifts to the theme of LOVE – God’s love.

Daily Reading: Psalm 33

“The earth is full of His unfailing love!” (v.5)

The apostle John proclaimed in 1 John 4:8 that God is love. Here Psalm 33 declares that He has written His character into His creation. The whole earth is full of the evidence of God’s unfailing love. The “heavens”, i.e. sky and space (v.6), the oceans (v.7), the earth itself (v.8), and even the great sweep of human history (v.10-11) all somehow reveal God’s love if we will only look for it.

Then in v.15 we come across a profound truth: “He … forms the hearts of all.” The NKJV translation reveals the underlying truth even more clearly:

“He fashions their hearts individually.”

God, in His unfailing love, has been deeply and intimately involved in our individual human lives even from conception (see Ps. 139), forming and fashioning us, from our mother’s womb to the present moment. Nothing that has happened in our lives (whether good or bad) has gone to waste. But in God’s loving hand, it has been an instrument for our formation. In love for us, God is near, God is with us, and God is at work within us.

In light of this great truth, Psalm 33 encourages us to turn our hearts and lives over to the Lord in absolute trust in His unfailing love for us:

²⁰ We wait in hope for the Lord;
    he is our help and our shield.
²¹ In him our hearts rejoice,
    for we trust in his holy name.
²² May your unfailing love be with us, Lord,
    even as we put our hope in you.

Lord, this day I turn my life over to You and I wait in eager expectation to see how You will reveal and unfold Your unfailing love for me. Amen.