Ah Lord GOD! behold, thou hast made the heaven and the earth by thy great power and stretched out arm, and there is nothing too hard for thee:
Jeremiah was a prophet in ancient Israel during one of the most catastrophic periods in his nation's history — the Babylonian empire's siege of Jerusalem, a military campaign that would eventually level the city and send its people into exile. While locked in prison for preaching an unpopular message, God gave Jeremiah a seemingly irrational instruction: buy a piece of land in territory about to be overrun by the enemy. No reasonable person would have made that investment. Jeremiah obeyed anyway — and then prayed this prayer. Rather than beginning with the crisis, he starts with the most foundational thing he knows: God created everything that exists, by sheer power and direct action, and that means nothing is beyond his reach. It is a prayer that reorients before it requests.
Sovereign Lord, I forget sometimes that the hands that shaped the universe are the same ones I'm trusting with my one small, complicated life. Nothing is too hard for you — help me believe that today about the thing I've quietly been treating as beyond repair. You made the heavens. You can handle this. Amen.
Jeremiah was sitting in a prison cell when he said this. Jerusalem was under siege. He had just signed a property deed for land he would almost certainly never set foot on as a free man. And he began his prayer with the sky. There is something worth sitting with in that move — not denial of the crisis, but deliberate reorientation before entering it. "You made all of this" is not a phrase that makes problems disappear. It is a recalibration. When a diagnosis is serious, a financial collapse is real, or a relationship has fractured past what you know how to fix, the pull is to start with the problem and spiral from there. Jeremiah starts with the Creator of the cosmos and lets the problem look different from that vantage point. "Nothing is too hard for you" is not a guarantee things will resolve the way you are hoping. It is a declaration about who holds the final word — and sometimes that is the only ground solid enough to stand on.
Jeremiah begins by describing who God is before making any specific request. What effect does that ordering have on a prayer — and how does it compare to how you usually begin yours?
What situation in your life right now tempts you most to believe something might actually be too hard for God? What is it about that particular thing that makes it feel beyond reach?
The verse holds two things together: God's cosmic transcendence ("made the heavens and earth") and his personal engagement ("outstretched arm"). Why do both matter — and which one is harder for you to hold onto on a given day?
Jeremiah trusted God even when the instruction he received made no practical sense. How do you personally navigate the tension between trusting a sense of direction and being foolishly reckless?
What would it look like this week to write your own version of this prayer — naming a specific impossible-seeming situation out loud and handing it to the God who made the sky?
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
Genesis 1:1
Behold, I am the LORD, the God of all flesh: is there any thing too hard for me?
Jeremiah 32:27
Is any thing too hard for the LORD? At the time appointed I will return unto thee, according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son.
Genesis 18:14
Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us,
Ephesians 3:20
Behold, the LORD'S hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear:
Isaiah 59:1
For with God nothing shall be impossible.
Luke 1:37
But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.
Matthew 19:26
I know that thou canst do every thing, and that no thought can be withholden from thee.
Job 42:2
'Ah Lord GOD! Behold, You have made the heavens and the earth by Your great power and by Your outstretched arm! There is nothing too difficult or too wonderful for You—
AMP
‘Ah, Lord GOD! It is you who have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and by your outstretched arm! Nothing is too hard for you.
ESV
'Ah Lord GOD! Behold, You have made the heavens and the earth by Your great power and by Your outstretched arm! Nothing is too difficult for You,
NASB
“Ah, Sovereign Lord, you have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and outstretched arm. Nothing is too hard for you.
NIV
‘Ah, Lord GOD! Behold, You have made the heavens and the earth by Your great power and outstretched arm. There is nothing too hard for You.
NKJV
“O Sovereign LORD! You made the heavens and earth by your strong hand and powerful arm. Nothing is too hard for you!
NLT
'Dear God, my Master, you created earth and sky by your great power—by merely stretching out your arm! There is nothing you can't do.
MSG