Psalm 104

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POST XL OF LX

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The Book of Common Prayer (1979) includes a plan for reading the Book of Psalms in morning and evening installments for 30 days.  I am therefore blogging through the Psalms in 60 posts.

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Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning:

Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them,

that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life,

which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ;

who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

—The Book of Common Prayer (1979), page 226

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There move the ships,

and there is that Leviathan,

which you have made for the sport of it.

–Psalm 104:27, The Book of Common Prayer (1979)

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Psalm 104, beautiful poetry, contains praises of God in nature.  The cosmology is pre-scientific, but as Galileo Galilei explained centuries ago,

The Bible tells us the way to go to Heaven, not the way the heavens go.

We read that, in the divine order one finds no chaos and evil.  We also read that God delights in creation and in the act of creating.  The author of Psalm 104 is properly unstinting in his praise of God.

Do we delight in nature?  I enjoy walking beside the Middle Oconee River and watching turtles on rocks in the river.  I also recall an especially beautiful butterfly outside my front door a few days ago.  I remember thanking God for the sight of the turtles and the butterfly.

If we really delight in nature, we will do more than thank God for nature.  We will act to preserve and protect it, for we are stewards of the earth.  A steward manages that which belongs to another–in this case, God.  The planet does not belong to us, but we belong to it and to God.

KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR

AUGUST 18, 2017 COMMON ERA

THE FEAST OF ERDMANN NEUMEISTER, GERMAN LUTHERAN MINISTER AND HYMN WRITER

THE FEAST OF WILLIAM PORCHER DUBOSE, EPISCOPAL THEOLOGIAN

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