He's Got The Whole World In His Hands (You & Me)

For the life of every living thing is in his hand, and the breath of every human being.
-Job 12:10

This, too, I carefully explored: Even though the actions of godly and wise people are in God's hands, no one knows whether God will show them favor.
-Ecclesiastes 9:1

He existed before anything else, and he holds all creation together.
-Colossians 1:17

The Son radiates God's own glory and expresses the very character of God, and he sustains everything by the mighty power of his command. When he had cleansed us from our sins, he sat down in the place of honor at the right hand of the majestic God in heaven.
-Hebrews 1:3

For everything comes from him and exists by his power and is intended for his glory. All glory to him forever! Amen.
-Romans 11:36 

He really does have the whole world in his hands, including you and me.  "How is this possible?", our little hearts ask.  It is because our God is big, mighty, all encompassing, and real.

And the person or face of our God is Jesus.  The gospel message is that God took on human form and showed himself to us.  The Father and The Holy Spirit are also God, because God is a triune God; which is a mystery or a revelation beyond human wisdom and reason, but it is true.

He has the whole world in his hands.  That's a poetic figure of speech in a song, but it is true.  That does not mean that he is controlling everything, but everything is within his reach or touch.

He is holding everything together, whether we realize it or not.  This realization, this discerning, and this experiencing needs to come from us.  The word of the world, with it's foolishness and deception is that there is no God (Psalm 14:1).

For those who do believe in God, the temptation is to believe in a weak or uncaring God, and get deceived.  The devil is still using the old strategy to tempt us to question what God said (Gen. 3:1), and get us to believe something different (2 Cor. 11:3).

The song, He's Got The Whole World In His Hands, is a Negro Spiritual, that anonymously arose from African American oral tradition.  The whole idea that God or Jesus, has the whole world in his hands, including you and me, came from the heart of an enslaved people, who were living in profound injustice.

Like Job, in his misery, the enslaved people, Africans brought to America; wrote beautiful songs, expressing their faith in God, that we call Spirituals.  Christians have always been suffering people - saved, but suffering.  Spiritual songs (Col. 3:16 & Eph. 5:19) are something Apostle Paul mentions, "psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs".

Paul writes, that we should, "teach and admonish one another" (Col. 3:16), with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs; or that we should, "speak to one another" (Eph. 5:19), with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.

Psalms might be the Psalms of the Old Testament.  Hymns are praise and worship songs written by people with talent from God for poetry and tune.  Our hymnals are full of these.

But, spiritual songs are something different.  Spiritual songs are songs of faith, sometimes written in the crucible of suffering.  Despite the real chains of bondage, the injustice, the not-a-good-life-now; spirituals express faith in God, in a faith like Job's, expressing, "although he slay me, yet I will believe" (Job 13:15).

My point here is that the song,  "He's Got The Whole World In His Hands", was not written by an "armchair Christian".  It was written by a community that was going through horrific suffering.  Their suffering was physical.

An authentic mark of a Christian is that he or she trusts God in suffering. We learn how to give thanks in all things (1 Thess. 5:18).


He's got the whole world in His hands
He's got the whole world in His hands
He's got the whole world in His hands
He's got the whole world in His hands

He's got the itty bitty baby in His hands
He's got the itty bitty baby in His hands
He's got the itty bitty baby in His hands
He's got the whole world in His hands

He's got a-you and me brother in His hands
He's got a-you and me brother in His hands
He's got a-you and me brother in His hands
He's got the whole world in His hands

He's got a-you and me sister in His hands
He's got a-you and me sister in His hands
He's got a-you and me sister in His hands
He's got the whole world in His hands

He's got the whole world in His hands
He's got the whole world in His hands
He's got the whole world in His hands
He's got the whole world in His hands

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The scriptures at the top are from the New Living Translation.

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