MFT82

I want to talk for a few minutes today about what the Psalmist shares with us in the 8th Psalm. The central question that is raised in the text of that Psalm is unusual (addressed to God, no less). The Psalmist is asking the question: “What is mankind that you should care so much about us?” Then the writer goes on and contrasts our puniness and insignificance with God’s limitless power, our instability with God’s constant reliability. Now the writer is not playing games with us. He is speaking on the basis of his own experience of the world around him and of nature. Actually he is sharing some of the things that have come to him over a lifetime of observation. Listen if you will to just what the writer of this Psalm has to say:

When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers,

the moon and the stars you have set in their courses,

What is man that you should be mindful of him,

the son of man, that You should seek him out?

You have made him but little lower than the angels;

You adorn him with glory and honor;

You give him mastery over the works of your hands;

You put all things under his feet…O Lord our God,

How exalted is your name in all the World!

These words are surely not impersonal theories about God. This writer is sharing his own very personal observations of the recurring patterns that formulate his very existence. He conceives of his faith in the light of what God has shown to him. He doesn't start with his need to find God, but rather with God’s ongoing effort to find us and to illustrate God’s own nature and purpose toward us. Isn’t that magnificent when you just stop and think about it.

However even as we admit that the mystery of our God is always beyond our comprehension, we must also remember that the opposite is true of God’s knowledge of each one of us! God’s knowledge of us is total. God understands everything about us, even our innermost thoughts. Yet even with all of our shortcomings, God loves us without any preconditions of any kind. You can know without any doubt that God will never abandon us regardless of how disappointing our thoughts and behavior may be. God just keeps on supporting us and keeps waiting for our response of trust – no matter how long it takes. He has absolute faith in us.

Our faith in God has its beginning in an awareness and appreciation of God’s faith in us. When we respond to God’s knowledge of us, realizing that his presence is always surrounding us and that his creative spirit sustains everything that is or ever will be, then and only then will we be able to share in the wisdom and the wonder of the writer of the 8th Psalm.