Читать книгу Reflections on the Psalms - Steven Croft - Страница 19

O Lord our governor,how glorious is your name in all the world!

‘… praised out of the mouths of babes’ (v.2)

Astronomy was a brand new science when this psalm was written. In Babylon, astronomers were beginning to map the sky, and they already had tables accurately predicting lunar eclipses. However, they had no concept whatever of the vast numbers and distances that we know are involved, now that present-day astronomers can turn their gamma-ray telescopes toward the void. To the believer, then as now, gazing upward results in awe at the majesty of God and his love for humanity (vv.4-5). To the sceptic, it affirms the impossibility of a Creator being responsible for such an insignificant thing as human life on planet Earth.

However, regardless of whether the scale of the cosmos strengthens a belief in God or does the opposite, there is someone whose thoughts are even more powerful than a psalmist or a scientist. That is a baby. A baby doesn’t attempt to explain God, nor measure him, nor reject him. A baby just wonders (v.2).

Nobody – not even the world’s most aggressive atheist – would tell an infant that it’s ridiculous to be in awe of what is just a random evolutionary blip in the great godless progress of the cosmos. Instead, a child is encouraged to marvel.

Baby one; atheist nil.

Psalm 8 is a reminder that a little more childish astonishment would be good for us all from time to time.

Reflection by Peter Graystone

Refrain:

O Lord our governor,

how glorious is your name in all the world!

Prayer:

We bless you, master of the heavens,

for the wonderful order which enfolds this world;

grant that your whole creation

may find fulfilment in the Son of Man,

Jesus Christ our Saviour.