Praise of Creation
“The heavens are telling the glory of God… There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard; yet their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.”
It’s little wonder that C.S. Lewis called Psalm 19 the most beautiful poem in all of the Psalms and the most beautiful lyrics in the world. The poetry of the Psalmist as they notice the praises of God being lifted by all of creation are indeed beautiful but also telling to us in our supposedly scientifically enlightened lives.
If we do not speak the language of nature, if we can not literally converse with the trees or the clouds or the stars, then how is that we come to know that all of creation sings God’s praises?
And the praise of creation in the beginning of Psalm 19 is connected to God’s Torah, or law, in the second part of the text… did you notice that? In times past many scholars thought that perhaps this was intended to be two separate Psalms but more contemporary scholarship challenges us to take the whole Psalm as it appears to us in our Bibles, as one complete idea. How is it that creation singing God’s praises in voices we cannot necessarily understand and yet we comprehend link to God’s law?
What happens when we allow ourselves to be drawn deeply into this Psalm is that we are confronted by a cosmos that proves to us in its own praises that God is truly God and, that the God of all creation has speaks a personal word to us, to humanity.
This means that creation is much more than something for us to study in order to control. At some level just as we are related to God through our kinship to Jesus Christ, so creation is related to God and us through the creating act of God himself! So, at some level we are connected not only to God but to creation.
Even the Hebrew words for man and creation are related adam for man and adamah for ground or earth. So, what does this mean for us on this Earth day?
It means that for us creatures our futures are linked to creation. When we harm creation we are hurting ourselves and not just in a physical way but in a deeper God linked way. We are hurting our connection to God. How we treat God’s earth, just as in how we treat each other, is a sermon about what we really believe about God.
So on this Earth Day I hope that you paused in this crazy time to listen to the voices of creation all around you. We are wired the same way as that tree or that grass or that bird to praise God in all we do… so let our lives preach our faith… we are connected to God, each other, AND God’s creation.
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Amen.
