Beyond the Patio

Basking in the Glory of God
Psalm 8

This day in the Christian year is referred to as Trinity Sunday. I use to try to explain the Trinity known as God but never could because all the analogies that I could muster up fell short of the Glory of God. I think that today the most appropriate thing that we could do is to take time to bask in the God’s Glory.  I believe this is what the Psalmist is doing.  The Psalmist gives us a glimpse of the Glory of God and shouts out in praise:

“O LORD, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens”. (Psalm 8:1)

I know God as a powerful creative force in the life of the universe and in my life that I can scarcely comprehend.  I know God as Love that continues to overwhelm me here and there and now and then.  I know God as presence in the world and deep within me that brings order and renewal out of the chaos of my life.  I don’t believe that I have to explain it.  I am content today to think of my experience of God and bask in the Glory of it all.  Even at that I feel that any words that I can think of using to describe that experience would be sadly inadequate. 

I feel rather like Charles Spurgeon when he talked about glory:

As for me, I cannot say that I will speak of glory, but I will try to stammer about it; for the best language to which man can reach concerning glory must be mere stammering. (Charles Spurgeon Sermons, 14:183-184)

I believe that when we talk of God, it can only be in the language of stammering. However, our adoration of God, our wonder, our awe of God can sometimes be best expressed in music and poetry. Today, when we recognize the majesty of God, JamesWendell Johnson’s poem Creation written around 1927 comes to mind. Listen to some of and catch the glory of it

And God stepped out on space,
And God looked around and said:
I’m lonely–
I’ll make me a world.

And far as the eye of God could see
Darkness covered everything,
Blacker than a hundred midnights
Down in a cypress swamp.
Then God smiled,
And the light broke,
And the darkness rolled up on one side,
And the light stood shining on the other,
And God said: That’s good!

Then God reached out and took the light in His hands,
And God rolled the light around in His hands
Until God made the sun;
And God set that sun a- blazing in the heavens.
And the light that was left from making the sun
God gathered up in a shining ball
And flung against the darkness,
Spangling the night with the moon and stars.
Then down between
The darkness and the light
He hurled the world;
And God said: That’s good! —-

——-Then God walked around,
And God looked around
On all that He had made.
He looked on His world
With all its living things
And God said: I’m lonely still.

Then God sat down–
On the side of a hill where He could think;
By a deep, wide river He sat down;
With His head in His hands,
God thought and thought,
Till He thought: I’ll make me a man!

Up from the bed of the river
God scooped the clay;
And by the bank of the river
He kneeled Him down;
And there the great God Almighty
Who lit the sun and fixed it in the sky
Who flung the stars to the most far corner of the night,
Who rounded the earth in the middle of His hand,
This Great God,
Like a mammy bending over her baby, 
kneeled down in the dust
Toiling over a lump of clay
Till He shaped it in His own image;
Then into it He blew the breath of life,
And man became a living soul.

Amen. Amen.

I love it! The great and wondrous God, who created this vast universe, created man and woman in God’s image, created us for a relationship, created us for love.

“What are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?
Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor.
O LORD, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth! “(Psalm 8: 4,5 and 9)

Just bask in the Glory of it all. 

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