Who Are We that…

I arrived at the office early this morning. The city was awakening from its slumber. The almost full and iridescent moon was setting low on the horizon, with Jupiter straggling along beside her.

I eschewed the work waiting for me in my office for a bit and took the elevator to the roof of our building. From there, the view was spectacular.

There is still a little cool crisp in the morning air, and the wind that buffed my cheek from up there had a little bite left in it. The city had a glow, with street lights and office lights from high rises starting to blend with the setting full moon and the soon to be rising sun – who, though not yet visible nonetheless had her rays spraying the eastern skyline behind me.

The words of the poet came to mind, Psalm 8:

“Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the Earth.

You have set your glory in the heavens.

When I consider your heavens, the work of your hands,

The moon and stars which you have set in place,

Who are we that you are mindful of us, humans that you care for us?

Yet you have made us little less than gods and crowned us with glory and honor.

You make us stewards over the works of your hands and put all things under our feet.

Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the Earth.”

At times hat impulse, that unutterable, ineffable and at times overwhelming sense that we are at one and the same time insignificant in the grand scheme of things and noble creatures adorned with our own sense of place and worth can overwhelm.

It did this morning.

Perspectives like these shift often, competing within each and reminding us where we stand in the grand scheme of things: I am nothing; I am known.

For it is so that the hands that fashioned this glorious orb upon which we live and breath, who called forth mountain and imprinted the valley, who set the eagle in the sky and the otter in the river, who warms us with a sun 93 million miles away and cools us with the gentle breeze – also shaped us in their image and likeness, breathed into us the breath of life, knew us when we were in our mother’s womb, calls us by name, and is always as close to us as our next breath.

Gentle traveler, pause in your days to know the splendor of God. Observe what the Creator has fashioned. Live in the presence of that which speaks of grandeur, and utters awe.

And know you are loved. Hands that set the world in motion and spun out universes also created you. You are a beauty and wonder equal to the setting moon and the rising sun.

Walk gently in this world. It harbors all that is good and stands ready to awaken your joy on this, your journey Into the Mystic.