PSALM 8
(For the director of music. According to gittith. A psalm of David.)

O LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory
above the heavens.

An acknowledgement of the grandeur and splendor which is God’s – how great and mighty he is; and how enormous the greatness of his glory which spans over the entire earth and above the very heavens themselves.

From the lips of children and infants
you have ordained praise
because of your enemies,
to silence the foe and the avenger.

The contradictions inherent in God is a great mystery; that from which is weakest comes the greatest source of strength: Praise, praise to God for his creation, silencing even the foe and avenger. The praise unto God that flows even out of the mouths of children and infants, holds a power sufficient to overcome all opposition, proving once and for all how needless to walk in our own strength, when we have such an abundant source of strength from God so readily available.

And, ultimately, the purpose it serves is to bow us human beings down, to accept our place in creation, by giving praise to him who created it all. That he may be exalted, and we humbled before him.

When I consider 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,
the son of man that you care for him?

David must have sat, like Abraham, and watched the starry skies at night, beholding the greatness of the universe and the enormity of his creation. And yet, they probably didn’t understand just how vast it was… that beyond this little world where they sat, there were enormous expanses of void; the first of which was crossed only in 1969 as man landed on the isolated rock called “the Moon” for the first time.

And beyond that, planets strewn over this vast expanse; and beyond that, one hundred thousand years of distance as the very light itself travels, with a hundred million stars in a great, enormous disc of light in what we call our galaxy… and beyond that, billions and billions of galaxies in enormous galaxy clusters with distances too far for the human intellect to comprehend; groups of galaxies making up the landscape of the universe itself, with vast, vast expanses glittering like precious gems on the beaches of the endless sea.

What is man that God should be mindful of him? A little coal-based human being, living on a rather insignificant planet, near a rather insignificant star, towads the outer end of one of the spiral arms of a galaxy among billions of others?

You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.

And yet these little coal-based life forms, created from dust and earth, has been put among the ranks of angels and heavenly beings, with a glory bestowed on us far, far above and beyond what we deserve.

You made him ruler over the works of your hands;
you put everything under his feet:
all flocks and herds,
and the beasts of the field,
the birds of the air,
and the fish of the sea,
all that swim the paths of the seas.

Not only so, but man has been ordained ruler of the earth, and put in a place of responsibility for the entire planet and everything that lives upon it. All the animals, the flocks and herds, the environment, the whole planet itself, is subject to the rule of us.

How difficult to rule even over a few individuals at work! Being manager over others is not an easy job, and not to be underestimated. How, then, to rule the entire earth?

And what an appalling job we have done so far. Only now, after centuries and millennias of mismanagement, is it becoming apparent what we have done to our world. Pollution, environmental disasters, mindless manipulation of the genetic code of our world in order to score a few more dollars, have burdened the planet to the point where it is becoming readily understood that from now on, most careful management is required to keep things going. And how much we little coal-based individuals need the wisdom of God to do this job!

Ultimately, this must be the lesson learned: That without the wisdom of God, we cannot manage our planet: By the time we fully understand the consequences of our actions and find measures to remedy those, it may be too late. We, too, must find our proper place in the scheme of things and subject ourselves to the rule of the one who created Everything. Only then can we become just and wise managers of our planet.

O LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!

This, then, is the springing point. Will humanity acknowledge God and his majesty, or deny it? Thereupon hangs the very future of our existence. To bow down to his majesty, assuming our rightful place in the world, or to boldly march into oblivion?

I guess it’s time for us to decide.