1 Chronicles 29:15-17, “For we are strangers before you and sojourners, as all our fathers were. Our days on the earth are like a shadow, and there is no abiding. O Lord our God, all this abundance that we have provided for building you a house for your holy name comes from your hand and is all your own. I know, my God, that you test the heart and have pleasure in uprightness. In the uprightness of my heart I have freely offered all these things, and now I have seen your people, who are present here, offering freely and joyously to you.”

The above passage is a momentous one, for it is the last prayer of David in the context of the last worship service that David led. How thrilling it is to know that David’s faith remained so firm at the last. He expresses with confidence that all the materials that they had gathered for the building of the great temple in Jerusalem, the task that would be completed by David’s son Solomon, came not from themselves, but from the hand of God.

We pray for our daily bread and then go out to work. It is foolish to say that we produced the bread; it came from the hand of God. The ultimate provision of bread, or anything, comes as a result of hundreds and thousands of tiny details that are orchestrated by God’s hand, by His providence, from the operation of our bodies that enables us to have the health to work to the opportunity for a job and the skill to perform it. Each of these tasks involves thousands of sub-categories of operation that must come together in just the right sequence.

Isaiah 60:20-22, “Your sun shall no more go down, nor your moon withdraw itself; for the Lord will be your everlasting light, and your days of mourning shall be ended. Your people shall all be righteous; they shall possess the land forever, the branch of my planting, the work of my hands, that I might be glorified. The least one shall become a clan, and the smallest one a mighty nation; I am the Lord; in its time I will hasten it.” When God’s hand of providence provides for us, it is that He might be glorified. This is true whether speaking of Israel’s possession of the land, as Isaiah does here, or speaking of what is provided in our lives that makes life possible and comfortable and enables us to accomplish tasks. If we fail to give God the glory, we incur His displeasure for we have not discerned the end purpose of all His provisions for us.