“O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth, Who have displayed Your splendor above the heavens!”
I doubt that I am alone in “star gazing”. As a child I often lay on the grass, in the hammock, or even sitting in a chair, and enjoyed gazing into the heavens. It could be daytime or night, but there were always things to engage my attention. I would often rise early just to see the sun peek over the horizon. All of those observations were worth the time, but it never led me to become an astronomer.
As the years rolled by we lived in Alaska and watched the Northern Lights; on one occasion I lay on the deck of a fishing boat in the waters close to Valdez and watched them come down over the mountain, cross the waters, and rise above other mountains. Spectacular does not suffice to explain those minutes as tears rolled down my cheeks.
Out here in Arizona, I find great satisfaction as I catch a glimpse of sunset after sunset and at times to be in remote areas with no lighting, but the planet and stars. I know that I will never forget my first glimpse of the Southern Cross as we travelled through the Caribbean!
The Psalmist evidently envisioned much that I have never observed in the heavens! He watched the moon and stars and said they were “ordained”. (v3) He referred to God’s creation and the heavens as “work of Your fingers”. (v3) That is “finger painting” at its finest from the God of all creation, and every part of it with a purpose that we enjoy today.
There it is! “What is man that You take thought of him, and the son of man that You care for him? Yet You have made him a little lower than God, with glory and majesty! You make him to rule over the works of Your hands; You have put all things under his feet. All sheep and oxen, and beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens and the fish of the sea, whatever passes through the paths of the seas.”
Following all that God has made He allows man to put all things under his feet!
And, in greatest humility and with unlimited praise the Psalmist echoes again those words of verse 1: “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth!
Gaze upon the Glory of God!
ETCetera 