Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday July 24, 2022
Scripture: Psalm 104:1-33
Have you ever had a moment when you have been overwhelmed by the greatness, the goodness, the vastness of God’s creation? In my own life, I call these “Oh, wow” moments.
I think of a time on a canoe trip when I was sitting at the edge of the water in the late afternoon, watching the sunshine dance on the waves, listening to the wind singing in the pine needles, looking for minnows, crayfish, or larger fish swimming in the shallows. I felt like I was part of this great big web of creation. My friend, who was further away from the shore called down and asked if I was reading, and I replied, no, I’m simply being.
Another time I was skiing out in BC, and I paused as I was about to drop into a bowl. I had a panoramic view of the mountains all around me – snow and rock – and I felt so miniscule, like a tiny insect about to make my way across a snowy expanse.
21 years ago, I had the opportunity to visit Egypt and Palestine; and in the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, some of us climbed up Mount Sinai, the rocky mountain in the desert where Moses went to chat with God. We climbed up to watch the sunset, which was spectacular, but when you watch the sun set from the top of the mountain, that means that you are climbing down the mountain in the dark. There in the middle of the desert with no light pollution, I have never seen so many stars as I did that night. It was hard to keep myself from walking off the edge of the path, as I kept tilting my head to look upwards. If the sunset was spectacular, the walk down the mountain was awe-inspiring, and that is the part of the day that left the deepest impression on me.
Earlier this week, in my mid-week e-mail message, I shared one of my favourite Calvin and Hobbes cartoons. In the first panel, Calvin is looking up at the night sky, with the vastness of stars that are there. In the second panel, he screams, “I’m significant!” In the third panel, he is again gazing up at the stars. And in the fourth panel, he whispers, “screamed the dust speck.”
Our hymn this week is “How Great Thou Art” and it is another hymn with a story! I didn’t know that this hymn started its life as a Swedish poem that was then set to a Swedish folk song. Carl Boberg was walking home one evening when he had one of those experiences that I call “Oh, wow” moments. He was walking home from church one evening, listening to the church bells, when a sudden and violent storm overtook him – thunder and lighting and wind. The storm left as quickly as it had arrived, a rainbow appeared, the water in the bay was like a mirror, a thrush began to sing, and the church bells were still tolling off in the distance.
In awe of what God could do and what God had created, he wrote a 9-verse poem praising and glorifying God.
When the song was later translated into English, our first two verses capture the language and the spirit of that original poem – awe and praise. The third and fourth verses were added on by the translator, Stuart Hine, as teaching verses when he was working as a missionary. But for today, I want to focus on the first two verses of the hymn.
I chose to pair this hymn with Psalm 104 this week, because they are both songs of praise – praising God as the creator and source of all, praising God for how God moves and works in creation, praising God for God’s care of creation.
If you are of a certain generation, you may know this song best as the Billy Graham hymn, since the evangelist Billy Graham usually included it in his gatherings. The reason why he liked this hymn is because it glorifies God – it turns our eyes away from ourselves and towards God. He called it a God-honouring song.
I might expand on this to say that not only does the song turn our eyes towards God, but the glory of God’s creation can also turn our eyes towards God – the subject of the song, even without the song to remind us, turns us towards God. That sense of awe and wonder that are evoked by the water or by the wind or by the mountains or by the stars – this awe points us towards God, for what kind of a majestic God could create all of this?!
It is almost like all of creation is a great artistic masterpiece; and if we know to look for it, we can see the artist’s signature all over it. Or to put it less poetically, the Holy Spirit, the part of God who is living and moving and working in creation, is present in every molecule, every atom, every sub-atomic particle of creation; and the Holy Spirit working in us allows us to recognize the Holy Spirit’s presence within the rest of creation.
We don’t worship creation itself – creation points us back to the Creator. But then the Creator and Source of all that is calls us to care for and tend creation, to be good stewards of creation. And so when we care for God’s creation, our care for creation becomes one way that we can worship or honour God, the Creator.
We aren’t the centre of creation, the centre of the universe. Instead, we are a part of an intricate web of creation, a community of creation – all of us created by God. Other parts of creation help us to see God more clearly; and when we live with respect in other parts of creation, when we care for the things that God has created, then we are living as God wants us to live. Every choice that we make that keeps the air and the rivers and the ground clean is an act of worship. Every action that we take that allows the trees and the rocks and the fish to exist and thrive as God created them to is an act of worship. Every decision that we make that allows creation to be and exist in harmony is an act of worship.
I started with a Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, so let me end with a different one. This time, Calvin the child and Hobbes the tiger are outside together at night, looking up at the stars. Calvin says, “If people sat outside and looked at the stars each night, I’ll bet they’d live a lot differently.” Hobbes asks, “How so.” Calvin replies, “Well, when you look into infinity, you realize that there are more important things than what people do all day.”
The punch line in the final panel has Hobbes observing wryly, “We spent our day looking under rocks in the creek,” and Calvin retorting, “I mean other people.” I know that this was intended to be funny, contrasting the big questions of the universe with the trivialness, the banality of looking under rocks in the creek; but really, when it comes right down to it, what could be more important than gazing on the awesome wonder of God, whether you find the awesome wonder of God in the stars and the galaxies, or whether you find the awesome wonder of God underneath the rocks in the creek.
And when we notice the divine presence, our souls will sing out, “How great thou art, God of all Creation!”
Photo Credit: LauraMarie Piotrowicz
She captioned this picture “Kate just being”
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