During the 1980’s when I was in my mid 20’s I had the privilege of travelling and adventuring in some absolutely breathtaking places on this blue green planet we call earth. One such place was in the Canyonlands National Park where I bivouacked beside a rock formation called Druid Arch during a backpacking trip. With the desert air being so dry, the stars shine with a brilliance I never had seen before in Canada. It felt like I could reach up and touch them. It made me feel so small and insignificant.
Image Source J.D. Stylos Photography
It reminded me about a story in Readers Digest about a family that was camping in one of those desert parks in the South-West United States. Their three boys decided they would bivouac and go to sleep watching the stars. The man and his wife just settled in for the night when the youngest came back to the tent dragging his sleeping bag behind him. The parents asked. “What’s wrong, are you cold?” The boy answered, “No, I just never knew I was so small”.
In the Bible there was a shepherd named David who must have felt the very same way when he looked up into the majesty of the night sky and is filled with awe. Suddenly he feels REALLY small. And David writes these words, “When I consider the heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?” Psalm 8:3-4
The “Whirlpool Galaxy”, one of possible 100 billion galaxies. Image Source
David could only see with his naked eye a portion of what would be our galaxy the Milky Way. Through modern science and astronomy we are learning there might be over 100 billion galaxies out there. David did not know all that. All David knew was that God cared for him.
What David was saying in Psalm 8 was this: If you look up into the skies and begin to think you are too small, too insignificant for God to care for you, you’re not. David knew that God created the world just for him as he continues to write in Psalm 8.
David is saying, “God you created all this just for us”. And that proves (says David) how much God really loves us. We don’t deserve God’s love, but God loves us anyways. And God went one step further to show how much He loves us when He sent Jesus to earth.
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