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.
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