The following is an excerpt taken from page 302 of Heart Aflame: Daily Readings from Calvin in the Psalms.
OCTOBER 28 • Day 302
The LORD remembers us and will bless us. It is as if it is said here: “We have already, from long experience, been taught how valuable the favour of our God is, because from this source alone have flowed our prosperity, our abundance, and our stability.” The prophet assumes the principle, that we neither enjoy prosperity nor happiness further than it pleases God to bless us. As there is no acceptance of persons before God, our low and abject condition ought to be no obstruction to our drawing near to him, since he so kindly invites to approach him those who appear to be held in no reputation. God’s liberality is an inexhaustible fountain, which will never cease to flow so long as its progress is not impeded by the ingratitude of men. And hence it will be continued to their posterity, because God manifests the grace and the fruit of his adoption even to a thousand generations.
The highest heavens belong to the LORD, but the earth he has given to man. Here the prophet extols the bounty of God, and his paternal regard for the human race, in that, though he stood in need of nothing himself, he yet created the world, with all its fullness, for their use. How comes it to pass that the earth is every where covered with such a great variety of good things, meeting our eye in all directions, unless that God, as a provident father of a family, had designed to make provision for our wants? In proportion, therefore, to the comforts which we here enjoy, are the tokens of his fatherly care. The amount is, that God, satisfied with his own glory, has enriched the earth with abundance of good things, that mankind may not lack any thing. At the same time he demonstrates, that, as God has his dwelling-place in the heavens, he must be independent of all worldly riches; for, assuredly, neither wine, nor corn, nor anything requisite for the support of the present life, is produced there. Consequently, God has every resource in himself.
Excerpt taken from page 302, Heart Aflame: Daily Readings from Calvin in the Psalms by John Calvin, copyright by P&R Publishing, 1999.
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