They all wait for You To give them their food in due season. — Psalm 104:27
Here we find the psalmist in a posture of awe and wonder at the majesty of God. As he contemplates the works of God, he is overwhelmed — and he lands in worship:
O LORD, how many are Your works! In wisdom You have made them all; The earth is full of Your possessions. — Psalm 104:24
Who Feeds the Animals?
What is striking about this psalm is how the psalmist characterises what God does — and if we take time to think it through carefully, we may well arrive at the same place of wonder.
The psalmist points to the creatures scattered across the seas and declares that it is God who gives them their food in due season.
Have we ever stopped to think about who feeds the animals out in the wilderness? Who feeds the creatures of the sea? We might quickly answer that they feed themselves — they hunt, they forage, they find prey and eat. Evolutionary theory has even framed this in terms of survival of the fittest — each creature struggling on its own, waking each morning to search for sustenance.
But this is not the view the psalmist takes. He looks beyond what we see to what causes things to happen. He reasons from first cause — arguing that everything that comes to pass is ordained by God. When you begin to look at things this way, what appears to be a simple instance of an animal leaving its den to hunt for prey and randomly finding something to eat becomes something far more profound. The psalmist concludes that it is God who causes the prey to be exactly where it needs to be, at exactly the right moment, for the predator to feed.
The Providence of God
This is the providence of God. He works through ordinary and natural means — He has ordered nature to operate in the way that it does. But we must never lose sight of the fact that He is the one who ordered everything to be the way it is in the first place.
Our God, who is in heaven, is so vast, so majestic, and so powerful that in His infinite wisdom He ensures that every creature that needs to be fed in a particular moment and a particular season is indeed fed. He is the one sustaining it all — and the reason for all of it is His glory.
Psalm 19:1-2 reminds us that the heavens themselves proclaim the majesty of God. This is how the entire created order glorifies Him — because He is the one feeding everything in existence, the one sustaining all that is.
Unlike what the deists believed, God did not simply create everything and then step back into a long uninvolved rest. He is actively present — ensuring that a plant grows in season so that an animal can feed upon it in season, so that another creature can feed upon that animal, and so the cycle continues. The ultimate sustainer of everything that exists is God Himself. If He were to stop sustaining creation, everything would cease to exist. Everything that is owes both its existence and its continued sustenance entirely to Him.
Jesus makes the same point in the Gospel of Matthew — that not one bird falls to the ground apart from the will of the Father, and that He Himself knows the very number of hairs on our heads. This is the power and the providence of God.
Comfort for God’s People
When we consider God sustaining and feeding every creature out in the wild and in the depths of the sea, we should find ourselves drawn to profound comfort. The God who provides for the lions and the cheetahs, the whales and the sharks, is the very same God who provides for us today.
When we read words like these from 1 Peter 5, they carry far more weight:
Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you. — 1 Peter 5:6-7
We can rest with absolute certainty in knowing that the same God who feeds and sustains every living creature is the same God who sustains us — His people — in every season.
Cast your burden upon the LORD and He will sustain you; He will never allow the righteous to be shaken. — Psalm 55:22
Amen.
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