By Chuck Griffin
Today’s psalter reading is Psalm 104:24-35b. Every now and then, it is good to stop and meditate on the greatness of God, a spiritual exercise that should be humbling, if nothing else.
O Lord, what a variety of things you have made!
In wisdom you have made them all.
The earth is full of your creatures.
Here is the ocean, vast and wide,
teeming with life of every kind,
both large and small.
See the ships sailing along,
and Leviathan, which you made to play in the sea.
Our increased ability to study creation deep beneath the sea and across vast expanses of sky should leave us not smugly astonished at our own abilities, but instead even more dumbfounded by what God has wrought. The more we see, the more we grow puzzled, with an always deepening set of mysteries before us.
The ocean in places remains unfathomably deep, and if the human mind were for a second to truly comprehend the vastness of the universe, it might not survive the experience. The scale of it all is far beyond what we can grasp with our senses, and yet, we know it is all within the grasp of God.
They all depend on you
to give them food as they need it.
When you supply it, they gather it.
You open your hand to feed them,
and they are richly satisfied.
But if you turn away from them, they panic.
When you take away their breath,
they die and turn again to dust.
When you give them your breath, life is created,
and you renew the face of the earth.
What’s truly remarkable is that a God so great would care for the minuscule components of what He has created. We are told that He takes note of every sparrow that falls. We begin to at least glimpse the power of an eternal being, one who can take as long as He wants to contemplate every conscious experience made possible by the creative act.
And in having made us, God loves us, so much so that He granted us freedom to choose and then rescued us when we did not choose well.
May the glory of the Lord continue forever!
The Lord takes pleasure in all he has made!
The earth trembles at his glance;
the mountains smoke at his touch.
The relationship between creation and Creator brings joy to all involved! Of course, the created, properly understanding our place, also must carry within a deep sense of humility, the first step toward proper worship of the one who has made all things.
I will sing to the Lord as long as I live.
I will praise my God to my last breath!
May all my thoughts be pleasing to him,
for I rejoice in the Lord.
True worship fully incorporates body and mind, requiring the assistance of the one who is worshiped. We cannot achieve such worship on our own. Remember this as we move toward Pentecost Sunday; the Creator’s Spirit must be within us and among us if we are to worship Him well.
Lord, grant us what we need so that our worship of you may be full and complete. Amen.
Methodist Life 