The heavens declare the glory of God

Psalm 19: 1 – 4

The heavens declare the glory of God;

    the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

2 Day after day they pour forth speech;

    night after night they reveal knowledge.

3 They have no speech, they use no words;

    no sound is heard from them.

4 Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,

    their words to the ends of the world.

I was meditating on these verses and wondering how the heavens, the stars, galaxies pour forth speech but verse 4 gives a clue; despite there being no speech or sound their voice goes out into all the earth.  But how?

In our light polluted heavens, we can easily lose connection with the sky that David, the psalmist saw. I only once saw anything like that in the Namib Desert in Namibia. I long to see it again. It was stunning. 

There were no human lights, and the sky was ablaze with stars, planets and all sorts of things that I have no name for. It was almost overwhelming. Words completely fail me. It was so bright, so incredible, so majestic, so marvellous you literally felt you could reach up and pluck a star from the heavens. There was not even a tiny space that was not flaming with light. 

Looking at a night sky like that, you can completely understand what David is writing about. Only an awesome Creator God can fashion that sky. If that is what the Creator created, what does that say about the Creator? The heavens do indeed declare the glory of God. 

Though the heavens have no language, no speech, no sound, their voices shout aloud of the magnificence of the Creator. The heavens reveal knowledge that Man is struggling to get to grips with.  Thousands of years after King David penned this psalm, with all our technology, space travel, high resolution telescopes we are only just beginning to realise the vastness of the universe. The Hubble telescope estimates there are 2 trillion galaxies, but astronomers are by no means convinced that they have discovered all there is.

Pillars of Creation - a cloud of gas and dust

I love those photographs that a deep space probe has sent back to Earth – extraordinary sights – unimaginable vistas. Clouds of gas and dust sculpted into astonishing shapes.  

My mind is in a spin – I cannot begin to compute anything of that magnitude. Even thinking about the 6,000 or so stars that can be seen from Earth requires a brain stretch on the edge of my ability. 

David is correct - Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. The sheer magnificence of the night sky shouts out to anyone, anywhere on the Earth below – there is a God, an awesome Creator God and everyone, everywhere on planet Earth can see and hear the song of the stars. 

All glory to God.