Skip to main content

The Heavens, the Sky...

             Your love, Lord, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies. Your righteousness is like the highest mountains, your justice like the great deep. You, Lord, preserve both people and animals. (Psalm 36:5-6) 

There are basically three ways that one could choose to understand this passage. Either the Lord’s love extends only in the heavens and does not reach the earth, or it extends from the earth only to heavens, or it extends from the earth through the heavens, filling both. Given the rest of the passage, the last understanding is the most likely meaning.

So what does God’s love being everywhere that we can possibly go mean? It means we may ignore it rather like we ignore the air that we breath. We only really notice air when it changes by carrying a scent, changing temperature or humidity, moving, or when we experience its lack and return (by holding one’s breath, for example.)

And as an aside, that might be a good spiritual discipline to practice. Hold your breath for long enough to be slightly uncomfortable – to the point where you recognize a need to breath or, lie on your back and breathe deeply, focusing on the air, perhaps in time to this psalm:

(Breathe in slowly) Your love

(Breathe out slowly) Lord

(Breathe in slowly) Reaches to

(Breathe out slowly) The heavens… etc.

Just as the Lord’s love reaches everywhere, so the Lord’s faithfulness. They aren’t things He does, but things He is. They provide immediate life -one can last only minutes without air, and only a split second without God’s love or faithfulness. God’s righteousness and justice are not pictured for us in the same way.

God’s righteousness is compared to a mountain. Scientifically speaking, mountains do change, but generally that change is very slow. Poetically speaking, mountains do not change. They are there forever, unyielding. One can see them a long way off, which means they can seem quite distant. They are a challenge to climb, but by digging into one, it’s possible to find treasure. Because of their terrain, they protect those on one side from enemies on the other. Streams often flow down from the peaks, providing water.

Likewise, the sea may seem far off, and its depths are mysterious, but its tides are predictable but not within our control. We may use them, but not command them. And from the sea brings judgments against which no one can stand in tsunamis and storms. At the same time, it is from the oceans that much of our air is produced. Algae provides more oxygen to the earth than the rain forests do. At the same time, the air absorbs moisture from the sea and deposits it on land, making life possible in the mountains as well as by the ocean.

Do yourself a favor sometime soon. Read a little science. Find a book about geology, meteorology, plate tectonics, the atmosphere, oceanography, or biology. Read it (or even part of it) with these verses in mind, and let science deepen your appreciation of God.

 

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The List

              Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,   through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance;   perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. (Romans 5:1-5)           Think about it. We have been justified. At least, we could be justified if we stopped insisting that our justification be based on our merits. We have peace with God, or could have peace if we stopped throwing temper tantrums. We have gained access into grace i...
Post a Comment
Read more

Meditations of the Heart

  May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. (Psalm19:14)           As I started writing this post, I noted that the meditations of my heart are all over the mental landscape, from a hub where eight superhighways come together to a lunar or nuclear landscape. Do you see my error? The moment I read the word meditation , I think about thoughts. But what’s described here is the meditations of our hearts ; our wills.           While the meditations of our minds may be all over the place, the meditations of our wills tend to be a little more stable by the time we are adults. We no longer tend to want to pursue the ten separate careers we did in any given day as children. Part of this is humble acceptance of reality. We come to understand that we can’t do it all. I think another part of it is disappointmen...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Shepherd!

                 “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me— just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep . (John 10:14) God said to Moses, “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’” (Genesis 3:14) The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths     for his name’s sake. Even though I walk     through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil,     for you are with me; your rod and your staff,     they comfort me. (Psalm 23:1-4) For the Jews, it was politically incorrect to make claims about yourself as a teacher (or possibly as anything else.) Teachers were expected to take pride in the...
Post a Comment
Read more