Zooming In (Friday Devotional)

“All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord; and all the families of the nations shall worship before him. For dominion belongs to the Lord, and he rules over the nations. To him, indeed, shall all who sleep in the earth bow down; before him shall bow all who go down to the dust, and I shall live for him.”

- Psalm 22:27-29

When Lindsey and I bought a new camera, there were several specifications we wanted it to meet: good resolution, long battery life, and video capability were all on our list. But when we tested cameras in the store, the first thing I looked at was the zoom. For me, that was the most visible difference between a cheap point-and-click camera and something closer to professional grade—when you looked through the viewfinder, did you have to see everything at once, or could you magnify something special in the crowded field of vision? For me, something about zooming in on one thing in a multitude—one pebble on a beach, one blade of grass in a field—enhanced the beauty of everything around it.

The conclusion of Psalm 22 uses this exact principle when it prophesies a day the Lord will be universally praised. All the ends of the earth, all the families of all the nations, both the living and the dead, all shall worship him. None are exempted, none are avoided, none opt out—all people, says the psalmist, will be united in their exaltation of God.

And, he says, I shall live for him.

In that moment, the psalmist zooms in in from the general to the specific, from the universal to the intimate. There is tremendous power in imagining God as sovereign over all of creation—but that power doesn’t truly hit home until you realize that ‘all of creation’ includes little ol’ you. When Philippians 2:10-11 says that every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord, you should never be so awed by the magnitude of that moment that you forget: that means your knee will bow and your tongue will confess.

There is joy in knowing that, as the hymn says, God’s got the whole world in His hands. But there is joy as well in zooming in from that picture and remembering that that means He also has you in His hands. It’s one thing to proclaim Jesus is Lord over all—but it’s a far greater act of faith to proclaim he is Lord over you.