Verse 1 and 2: This rather short psalm jumps out with a great burst of praise: "How great is your name, O Lord our God..." The title, LORD, is a substitute for God's unspeakable name. Would that Christians were so careful about God's name, who (not infrequently) use it as a curse.
Verse 3: Even the littlest children know and praise God. Who taught me to know God, to love God, to wonder about God's awesomeness? Then the psalmist announces that God's name is powerful and can foil the enemy. That enemy is spiritual: there is something about each human person that does not want us attached to God's praises!
Verse 4: "When I see the heavens..." The psalmist is awestruck by everything God has made. Am I? In a world of shame-ing I like that the psalmist looks UP. Notice in this verse that God seems to be playing - God taking delight in creating planets and their moons, the galaxies and constellations. So often, God is cast in a bad mood - but not here! Do we project our own irritability on God? God plays! How God must have enjoyed making the kinds of birds, each with its own feather coloring, nest construction and egg design, songs and migration patterns. How sad for us that any plant or animal species would become extinct by our greed and stupidity.
Verse 5: And in the midst of all this designing and creating, God has kept us mind. No two of us are exactly alike, and that God would be so careful to provide for us in our needs. We are a breath of God; a heartbeat of God, Pope John Paul II has said.
Verse 6: The ancient Hebrew's believed that God's heavenly court was filled with mysterious god-like beings. Human beings are a little lower than they. God has given something of himself to us, so close, that we have been crowned with God's own glory and honor. Imagine if we believed this about every human being, in all our variety!
Verses 7,8,9: And God has trusted us, putting us in charge. But we have twisted it up badly. A great elephant is killed every twenty minutes for its big-money tusks, so we can have ivory baubles. A world without elephants and the great animals we track down with GPS systems, kill with super weapons and stupidly call "Trophies." How monied we are and power-addicted, but how poor.
Did God know at creation that we'd become the sick destroyers of his imagination-gift? If the whole world consumed resources to the degree that WE do, three planets would be needed to contain the trash and waste.
Verse 10: The psalmist seems to have gone off in a stream of holy consciousness, and now, in this final verse, abruptly returns to his first thought: How great God is - how elegant, how wondrous and kind.
Verse 6: The ancient Hebrew's believed that God's heavenly court was filled with mysterious god-like beings. Human beings are a little lower than they. God has given something of himself to us, so close, that we have been crowned with God's own glory and honor. Imagine if we believed this about every human being, in all our variety!
Verses 7,8,9: And God has trusted us, putting us in charge. But we have twisted it up badly. A great elephant is killed every twenty minutes for its big-money tusks, so we can have ivory baubles. A world without elephants and the great animals we track down with GPS systems, kill with super weapons and stupidly call "Trophies." How monied we are and power-addicted, but how poor.
Did God know at creation that we'd become the sick destroyers of his imagination-gift? If the whole world consumed resources to the degree that WE do, three planets would be needed to contain the trash and waste.
Verse 10: The psalmist seems to have gone off in a stream of holy consciousness, and now, in this final verse, abruptly returns to his first thought: How great God is - how elegant, how wondrous and kind.
