A Thought For The Week Of January 25, 2016

"The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands." (Psalm 19:1) The strange thing about Psalm 19 is that I always remember it incorrectly. Yes - "the heavens declare the glory of God." That part I remember. But for whatever reason I always think of the next few words as "the earth proclaims the work of his hands." But it's not the earth - it's "the skies." Perhaps I make that mistake because I tend to think of the heavens and the skies as the same thing - that "heaven" is "up there." This Psalm reminds me that the biblical authors had a mocu more complex view of creation than we often give them credit for. They obviously understood that heaven was not "up there." They understood that "the heavens" we not a place in the sky - "the skies" were totally different. As I reflected on this I came to a better understanding of what the author meant when he aid that "the skies proclaim the work of [God's] hands." He's talking about the universe - the physical, created universe. He's suggesting that the very existence of the universe is itself a sign of God's presence and of God's creative activity. We don't know exactly how they came to be. The Big Bang Theory only tells us that there was a big bang; it's silent on the question of what came before the big bang The origin of everything is shrouded in mystery; shrouded in God. The best words I've heard about what existed before the big bang came from, I believe Stephen Hawking, who said simply that "the universe that existed before the big bang would have been a very strange place indeed." Personally, I think whatever existed before the act of creation was, in fact, God. I see the existence of the universe itself as an awe-inspiring testimony to the ultimate mystery I've come to know as God, who is the source of all that exists - the heavens that declare God's glory, and the skies that proclaim God's work.