Healing Rays of Righteousness

Read Psalm 8

I had seen many beautiful pictures of the Grand Canyon and eagerly anticipated our visit there on one of our western vacation trips. I remember finally arriving, parking our travel trailer and walking up the path to the canyon viewing area.

WOW! I was overwhelmed with feelings of speechless amazement and awe as I stood gazing into the indescribable vastness, grandeur, and beauty of that canyon. It was “majestic” – impressively beautiful with a vast grandeur that is beyond descriptive words.

Neither can you walk along a beach at evening of day and not be stopped and held in holy awe as the sun slowly dips into the ocean at sunset. Along with all of nature, we fall silent, as if in a great concert hall. Human conversations become hushed as all eyes turn toward the sun until it disappears below the western horizon. The silent and majestic splendor of God’s sunset has worked its miracle in our hearts and we echo the words of the psalmist, “Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”

Psalm 8 is written by King David and opens and closes with these words of worshipful praise. David is declaring that God’s name excels all others. God’s name, his character, is holy, majestic, mighty, and glorious. His name is above all names.

King David continues, “You have set your glory in the heavens.” It is God’s majestic lordship over all things as Creator and Sustainer that reveals his glory. The whole creation, both earth and heaven’ give witness to God’s majestic glory.

Today, we marvel at the vastness of the heavens with more data than was available to David’s unaided eye. We now know that in one second a beam of light travels 186,000 miles, which is about seven times around the earth. It takes eight minutes for that beam to go from the sun to the earth. In a year that same beam travels almost six trillion miles. Scientists call this a “light-year.”

Eight billion light-years from earth is halfway to the edge of the presently known universe. Within the universe there are a hundred billion galaxies, each with a hundred billion stars, on the average. In all the galaxies, there are perhaps as many planets as stars, ten billion trillion. These statistics overwhelm our human comprehension.

Psalm 8 reminds us that beyond the vastness of the universe is the vastness of God. The moon and stars are merely the work of God’s fingers. The whole universe sits on His potter’s wheel; the whole universe stands on His workbench.

Recognizing the vastness of creation and the majesty of God “in the heavens,” King David ponders before the Lord: “When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?” (vv.3-4).

In his worshipful thoughts toward this Almighty, Creator God, so glorious and majestic in the natural sphere, King David reflects on God’s relationship with us human beings. Reassured and inspired by God’s Spirit, King David declares “You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor.” (v.5).

Again, I say WOW! God’s name is not simply majestic in all the earth; God’s name is crowned in our hearts, for we are born anew and baptized in God’s majestic name.

Our Father God, the God in whom we confess our faith, is not a generic, no-name deity. Our God is not a god who created and started the earth going like some cosmic watchmaker and then disappeared from the scene, never to be heard from again.

Our God, the God of the Bible, is not a faceless, nameless deity who must be appeased in order for us to have good fortune in life. And neither is our God some vague, spiritual being who conforms to whatever we happen to believe as long as we are sincere about it.

This is the God who gave the Law on Mt. Sinai, saying “I am the Lord your God. …You shall have no other gods before me.” (Ex 20:2a, 3).

This is the glorious God in whose “majestic” name we gather to worship, and by whose “majestic” name we are blessed and sent out into the world to live and act, bearing witness to God’s creative and redeeming work.

Truly, our one vocation in life is to participate in making God’s name “majestic” in all the earth. Daily we pray, “Father, help us make holy your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. …Amen.”

“Healing Rays of Righteousness” – June 19, 2019