Creator, Father, King #31

What are mere mortals that you should think about them, human beings that you should care for them?

HAVE YOU EVER LAID on your back outside on a clear evening and gazed into the nighttime sky? It is a marvelous thing to behold.

On a cloudless night approximately three thousand years ago, King David did this too. Israel’s great shepherd-king didn’t have all the high-tech astronomy equipment and scientific knowledge that we now possess. But he knew what his eyes told him, and it was as awesome in 1,000 BC as it is today.

David saw thousands of twinkling stars. He noticed the moon in its glory as it reflected the sun’s radiance. Perhaps he even spotted a shooting star or Venus, if the timing was right.

The sight took David’s breath away. After soaking it all in, the Bible’s greatest songwriter wrote the timeless, inspired words of Psalm 8:3-4: “When I look at the night sky and see the work of your fingers—the moon and the stars you set in place—what are mere mortals that you should think about them, human beings that you should care for them?”

What’s It Mean?

Against the backdrop of God’s incomprehensible universe, it’s easy to feel utterly insignificant and completely irrelevant. And yet we are not.

Although you might feel like a mere blip in the cosmos, God greatly loves you and cares for you, as today’s verse says. In fact, Psalm 8:5 goes on to say that God gave us an exalted place in creation as his image-bearers: “Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings [i.e., angels] and crowned him with glory and honor” (ESV).

In all his majesty and power, God knows you by name. He knows every detail about you, great and small. He has planned out your days. You are loved by him.

Most amazingly, he provided his Son, Jesus Christ, to redeem you from your sins. This Jesus, the eternal second Person of the Trinity, “created the world” and “upholds the universe by the word of his power” (Hebrews 1:2-3, ESV).

Meditate on that blessed gospel truth the next time you stargaze!

Now What?

Read all of Psalm 8 to rejoice in God’s majesty and our blessed status as his image-bearers.

Did You Know?

There are about five thousand to ten thousand stars observable to the naked eye from earth (depending on various estimates), but only half of those are visible to us at any given time since the other half is obscured by earth’s opposite hemisphere.