“O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens...
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?
Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honour.”
Psalm 8:1, 3-5,
It's spring and people are coming out of their homes to enjoy it! The leaves are all coming out on the trees and flowers are starting to bloom. It’s a great time to be alive with this yearly rebirth of nature displaying God’s magnificent handiwork. If we look, we’ll see each bloom on the daffodils as a work of art and now we’re about to be treated to the beauty of the tulips as they also flower. David, as a teenage shepherd on the hills of Israel, had seen this firsthand. Rather than allowing the beauty of nature all around to entrance him, he was filled with thankfulness and awe towards the One who had created it.
The other morning, I was up at 5:30 and heard the birds already in full song – how great is that! We see God’s hand in all his creation. One of the great things about going to a camp in the summer or going to a cottage is to be away from the city lights. And then, we are able to look up at the grandeur of the heavens. David could say in verse 3, speaking to the Lord, that they were your heavens, made by your hands, which you have set in place.
The earth teems with life so complex, even in its simplest form, that only God could make it. From this life he has filled the earth with song and colour. Yet billions of dollars are being spent searching for planets that could hold life. There is currently a frenzy of activity to explore Mars for evidence of life, since it seems to hold water. It shows how desperate man is to prove that evolution answers all the questions of life and of man’s existence so that God is not required. How mankind has been blinded!
For the believer, it’s important to open our eyes again to the glory all around us and take time to enjoy the grandeur of God’s creation. What a mighty God we have!
Organic life is a marvel of cells filled with multiple simultaneous manufacturing processes at the extremes of miniaturization – all guided by the DNA operating manual. But verse 5 of this psalm starts with the little word ‘Yet’. God has something even more wonderful to tell us about Creation. He now presents to us something greater than just organic life – it’s his creation of man, combining both organic and spiritual life – sentient eternal beings clothed in mortal bodies with moral awareness and freedom of choice. Amazingly he has set mankind over the whole of his creation.
Certainly, we messed it up. We chose our own way, but God has set his love on us, has plans for us and sent his Son to reconcile us to himself. We are his special creation. So, with the Spirit’s help we need to see others, not as earth’s most highly evolved species (Satan’s lie), but as God sees us. We need to treat all others that we know and meet as “a little lower than the angels”. It will be hard at times, but we need to live in the realization and the wonder of what God our Creator has made!
Make it a point today to see God’s creation with the wonder it deserves and to treat our fellow travellers, though fallen, with grace and kindness as beings with real value uniquely made in his image.
