“You have set your glory above the heavens!”
When I was little and thought that God was just up there, “somewhere above the earth,” somewhere above the heavens, I used to imagine that this Lord was truly majestic to be up there, wherever that was. My love for nature and study of science only served to impress upon me how awesome this God is. I never had to battle with that tug of war- Creation or Evolution. After all, I witnessed evolutionary transformation as I studied microbes under the microscope, and I figured that God’s way of doing things would always confound us human beings.
As I grew older and had opportunity to travel up there, I engaged in deeper critique of my small and skimpy understanding of the Creator’s greatness and majesty, insofar as the created order is concerned. After all, I was a little person. Even though I had big brains, so they said, I had no idea how vast “up there” was. Even if you never get to space to get a first-eye glimpse of more of the spacious abundance and intricacy of creation, growing older should help you become wiser, not silly enough to think that all these marvels came out of nowhere.
I’m thankful for having had the privilege of hiking into special little places with glorious sights for human eyes to feast on. I’ve managed to scale hills and mountains whence I beheld views that should last, should my eyes fail. And to think of it, my adventures pale in comparison to those of the folk who make exploration into nature their daily delight.
“When I look to the heavens?” Wow! When I fly through what I used to think was the limit, relax and sleep over blankets of clouds, travel into the sunrise, and look down on the grandeur of creation beneath, I echo the psalmist. “Who are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?”
Just this past week, I couldn’t resist picking up some fallen leaves and reminding myself of Botany lessons about such as things as phyllomorphy.
You know, you don’t even have to climb a mountain or get above the clouds. The amazing beauty of nature is right down on the ground too. As the leaves are falling this autumn, I get another chance to appreciate the varied leaf forms that are around me all the time. Not to talk of flowers! And notice, I’ve not got around to fauna. That’s for another post. Just look at those lichens. – lower order of plant life, botanists say. Imagine that the marvels of the lower order are so many, the range of creation exclaims “Majesty!”-
“O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”