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.

 

The wonders of creation

For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him.  He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. Colossians 1: 16 – 17

Science is not one of my strongest subjects. I have difficulty with chemistry and all those elements, atoms and molecules. I can’t make much sense of it though I do not doubt its existence or who created it all.

The universe is an awesome place full of magnificent galaxies, star systems, nebula, worms, planets, moons, comets, meteors and goodness knows what else. I can’t make much sense of all that either and though I have never seen it I do not doubt its existence given the incredible photos the scientists produce and knowing who created it all.

There are scientists who understand these things very well, as much as any man can and some of them also are convinced who created it all. John O’Keefe an astronomer at NASA says, ‘We are, by astronomical standards, a pampered, cosseted, cherished group of people….. If the Universe had not been made with the most exacting precision we could never have come into existence. It is my view that these circumstances indicate the Universe was created for man to live in.’

How amazing is that?

Various scientists are also convinced of this. They say that the relationship between sun and Earth is perfect for all creation to live and flourish here. The atmosphere of Earth is also perfect for life here. Apparently there are about two dozen parameters of the universe that if altered even a tiny bit would prevent life on Earth from existing.

For those of us who believe that God is the Creator of all of this, it comes as no surprise.  Nevertheless it is mind-blowing. It is all so vast and incredible but that is our God.

Jesus too showed us that he is Lord over creation. He altered the molecules of water to turn it into wine, he commanded the wind and waves to be still, he altered the law of gravity to walk on water and he conquered death by not only commanding Lazarus and others to rise up and live but by doing so himself. This is our God.

In the midst of our trials and difficulties we have a God of incredible love and kindness who can speak into our circumstances and command them to be still, to change, to be healed. If Jesus could tell Peter to go and catch a fish and take a coin out of its mouth which was the exactly the right amount to pay the temple tax, I think he might be able to help us in our financial difficulties!

I love what John O’Keefe says that we are a ‘pampered, cherished, cosseted group of people.’ God is so kind to us, he cares about us. He may be the mind-blowing God who created a universe that I and I suspect most people cannot even to start to get their heads around and yet he cares about the everyday details of our lives.

Too often we do not invite God’s intervention in our lives because of some sort of misguided desire for independence or we simply forget. When we do ask for his help, guidance, provision, wisdom or miracle it comes so beautifully, so gently, so lovingly and so kindly that we wonder why we never asked before.

I cannot claim to understand any of it whether the incredible creation of a vast universe in which tiny planet Earth sits so perfectly or God’s wonderful hand of grace on my life but all I can do is sit in awestruck thankfulness to my magnificent, majestic, marvellous Creator and God. 

Psalm 8

Psalm 8

Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’

So God created mankind in his own image,
            in the image of God he created them;
            male and female he created them.

God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.’ Genesis 1: 26 - 28

Psalm 8 is one of those wonderful psalms of David which praises the Creator and his wonderful creation. You can imagine David sitting looking up at the starlit Milky Way marvelling at the wonders of the heavens.

Several years ago we went to Namibia and stayed out in the desert in a remote guest house. Electricity was provided by generators so there was little light pollution. We walked a short way up the untarred road by the light of the moon and gazed at the night sky. It was absolutely stunning. Stars hung so brightly that it felt as if you could reach up and pick them. The sky was covered in stars and planets, far more than I had ever seen before even in a dark place in Britain. It was as if the heavens were aglow with tiny lights.

It must have been a night sky of such beauty that David gazed with wonder.  He marvelled that God ordained praise to overthrow every enemy not from the powerful, rich and famous but from infants and children.

As he considered the glories of the heavens he was amazed that God should even remember, let alone honour or even consider puny man. Man is the apex of God’s creation, made in his image and created only a little lower than the heavenly beings, the angels.

In this space age we have some understanding of the heavens that David did not have yet it is this very knowledge that we have acquired that should make us wonder afresh at man’s position in the creative order. As telescopes and space probes reveal ever more amazing sights in the heavens; black holes and star systems, nebula and exploding gases we realise how awesome is this creation and therefore how truly incredible is the Creator.

Yet even more amazingly, God has assigned to man the most wonderful honour of ruling over this breathtaking creation in subordination to God himself. David remembered man’s original call given to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.  How far short mankind has fallen from this God given mandate.

However the writer of Hebrews in recalling these verses (Hebrews 2: 8 – 9) shows that their ultimate fulfilment came in Jesus Christ and that through him mankind will once again fulfil their destiny.

Next time you have opportunity to gaze at the night sky, marvel again with David at our awesome God and his amazing creation and remember our true calling to rule over this creation with love and compassion and with the wisdom of God not to exploit and manipulate it for our own ends but to steward it for God’s glory.

He calls the stars by name

He determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name.

Great is our Lord and mighty in power, his understanding has no limit.  Psalm 147: 4 – 5

The minute we start to consider the universe or gaze in wonder at the night sky, our small brains can get quickly overwhelmed.  Our galaxy, the Milky Way is stunning and it is made up of between 100 and 200 billion stars. At any one time we can see up to 2000 stars with the naked eye though there are about 6000 stars you could see. That leaves an awful lot of stars that cannot be seen unless you have a telescope. Astronomers say that our little star the sun is out on one arm of our spiral galaxy and it would take over 20,000 light years to reach the centre of the galaxy. It takes over 200 million light years for our sun to travel around the galaxy. Then wait for it – there are an estimated 300 – 500 billion galaxies.

Milky Way

When the Psalmist wrote that God called the stars by name he was looking at about 2000 stars in a night sky unaffected by light pollution. It would have been beautiful and even the Psalmist may have realised that he was not looking at all there was to see yet he confidently asserted that God called the stars by name. Whether you take that statement literally or metaphorically – God created all of it and let’s face it if he can make all those stars he can certainly name them! Not only that but the writer to Hebrews asserts that ‘the Son … sustains all things by his powerful word’ (Hebrews 1: 3). He sustains all the galaxies by his word!

However before we collapse under an overwhelming sense of insignificance we must see that these verses in Psalm 147 are the meat in a sandwich of hope. The bread of the sandwich is, ‘The Lord builds up Jerusalem; he gathers the exiles of Israel. He heals the broken hearted and binds up their wounds (verse 2 and 3) and ‘the Lord sustains the humble but casts the wicked to the ground’ (verse 5). This Psalm was written after the exile and these verses were to give hope to a scattered, heartbroken people who had lost everything. They would have felt insignificant in the hands of their oppressors and would have wondered if God had forgotten or finished with his people forever. God wanted to assure them he had nor forgotten them and as creator of the universe, he had the power to restore them.

Crab Nebula

Today, God does not intend us to be overwhelmed by his incredible, mind blowing creation which we are far more aware of thanks to the amazing advances in astronomy. God wants us to take heart that though he created the universe, he also knows, loves, cares and sees each one of us. Too often we look through the wrong end of the telescope at the universe and see everything tiny, remote and far off which reinforces our sense of insignificance. We need to turn the telescope around and see things from God’s perspective. He sees, knows and calls the billions of stars by name but he can also hone right in on Planet Earth and then onto every one of us. We are not small and insignificant to him. He knows, he sees, he cares about all the minutest details of our lives.  What an awesome God!