Do you see what I see?

Today, I preached on Psalm 8. It's largely regarded as a psalm of creation, although there are good arguments about why it could be considered a psalm of royalty--one devoted to extolling the vocation of Israel's ancient king for the entire world.

The psalmist is able to proclaim the majesty of the Lord's name throughout the earth based on what he has seen in creation. "When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars you have set in place..." The psalmist sees a BIG God behind a BIG creation, and that God just happens to be the same One who has rescued Israel from its slavery dilemma. This God behind creation is their God, and that God's name is majestic in all the earth.

At the same time that the psalmist recognizes the splendor of creation, he also recognizes his own insignificance in the face of everything. "What is man that you are mindful of him/the son of man that you care for him?" Who are we in the midst in relationship to this God who can create planets many times the size of ours AND enzymes/proteins/atoms that make everything work? We're nothing from our point of view.

But from God's point of view, we are the crown of creation, set in creation for a purpose: to be caretakers of the work of God's "fingers." The psalm is full of praise for what God has been doing in creation and how God pays special attention to us in this creation. "O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth."

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Truth be told, I haven't felt like proclaiming the Lord's majesty lately by proof of his creation. It seems, from the perspective of our global community, that creation is running amok and out to get us. A cyclone in Myanmar blew away tens of thousands. (An NPR reporter interviewed a man from an outlying village. He said that 9 in 10 of his villager were gone. Can we even fathom that?) A week later, an earthquake in China topples homes and buildings on families, schoolchildren, and workers. More people are lost. Even here in the states, tornadoes have been wiping out whole towns and killing some. A woman from Picher, OK, said this about God's creation when a tornado destroyed her entire town: "It felt evil...it didn't feel like Mother Nature. It felt personal."

Truth be told, I feel more like Peter who has to distrub a sleeping Jesus as a storm ravages their tiny boat on the sea and ask the question: "Do you not care that we are perishing?"

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Perhaps Psalm 8 really isn't the psalm that we need at this time, however, it is the psalm appointed for the church to consider this weekend. Can we do that realistically in the midst of everything the global community has faced over the last few years in respect to creation? I think we can.

I struggled in prayer with this psalm over the last two weeks. I asked God why he stuck us in this kind of creation that is running out of control. The suffering we cause on each other...I get that. But this kind of indiscriminate suffering...I don't get. Through prayer and lots of conversation with others, I received two words of comfort and truth.

Truth #1) We belong to nature, and nature belongs to God. Our God is BIG enough to handle the vastness of creation. From end to end of universe, places we haven't even discovered, God handles it all. Yet, God is not caught with the BIG problems of creation, God is concerned about the details. God is concerened about the enzymes and proteins and atoms that make everything BIG work in the first place. We belong in the midst of this and under the care of the God who owns nature.

But if we stay with this truth alone, we run into a problem. Nature doesn't work with us at times, and if all we have is nature to infer the kind of God to whom we belong--we have a problem. Nature doesn't always lead us to the kind, caring, concerned God whom we see in Jesus and our Scriptures. That takes us to Truth #2).

Truth #deuce) God is mindful of us. This is at the heart of Psalm 8...it's the psalmist asking deeply, why are you mindful of us? From our very beginnings, God has been revealing himself to us to show us how valued we are in this creation. To Adam and Eve, they walk with the presence of God. Abraham is visited by God through three strangers. The Israelites are led by pillars of fire and clouds as God leads them into the promised land. Job sees God in a whirlwind, Ezekiel finds him in absolute silence of the night. God has been popping up all the time to remind us that we belong to him and we are specially loved.

Even though this is nice of God to show up in this way, we're still left in this creation that isn't so concerned about our value. That's where the true force of this psalm comes into play. "You have given him dominion over the works of your hands."

This psalm is about Jesus. And Jesus is God's final revelation of just how much we are loved and valued and known in the midst of this creation that causes us to suffer. Jesus is God-becoming-flesh, joining himself with creation and putting creation to rights for all the ways that it has gone awry.

In the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, a new creation is raised up by God through this old one. Jesus' victory over death secures him the rightful place as the one who truly has dominion/authority/and rule over all of creation. And it's through this unique act of God that we can truly proclaim the majesty of the Lord's name throughout all the earth.

Nature and all its works fail us. Jesus doesn't. Thanks be to God that all God's glory is found fully in Jesus and not just in some pretty landscape scenes that we witness every once in a while.