Callie Smith
- Kjelder
- Mar 18
- 2 min read
He’s got the whole world in his hands!
I serve as Director of Family Ministry, as well as manage St. Alban’s social media.
“17 You open wide your hand *and satisfy the needs of every living creature." Psalm 145:8–19
Devotional
I invite you to marvel at this verse with me: “You open wide your hand / and satisfy the needs of every living creature.” Like any great work of art, this image of God’s hand reaches out across time and is alive, grabbing our attention. Before writing this devotional, I thought imagery related to God’s body was unique to the New Testament—something that only mattered after God was made flesh through Jesus.
But no! Our ancient family, our siblings who sung this poem thousands of years ago, felt a kinship with God’s body. As Biblical scholar Francesca Stavrakopoulou writes in her book God: An Anatomy, “Our handedness not only renders us a species of creative action – doers – but beings of tactile perception, relation and reaction – feelers. I touch, therefore I am. Within the ancient religious imagination, the God of the Bible was no different. He touched, therefore he was. By contrast, a god with unfeeling hands was no god at all” (p. 239).
This image of God holding us is one of my earliest pictures of our Creator that I inherited through the song, “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.” I remember looking at my small, five-year-old hands and thinking, “Wow, God is a giant! The world must be so heavy to hold! How can He carry monster trucks and mountains so easily?”
It is awe-inspiring and beyond our imaginations to picture God holding every living creature, yet, God nourishes all of us all from the pangolin to the flea, to the once-pouncing saber-toothed tiger.
There is also comfort in knowing that God holds those who we feel helpless for, be that a parent with a terminal illness or children in ICE detention facilities.
As the Director of St. Alban’s Family Ministries, I regularly sing “He’s Got the Whole World” with our congregation’s children. We never run out of verses; from hairy tarantulas to LSU’s baseball team, we praise and celebrate God’s creation. From our bright little classroom, we join the chorus with ancient poets.
