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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.

 

 

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