Today's Scripture Reading (September 10, 2022): Psalm 148
In the beginning, God created
the heavens and the earth. According to the Great Creation Poem, God started
with the big things of creation, creating the universe and the galaxies and
stars before he turned his attention to the planet, creating the atmosphere of
the planet, and then the land and the oceans. Then God created the birds of the
air and the fish of the sea. He created the reptiles that walk on the land and live
in the water. After which, he created the mammals to rule over the land. And when he had finished with everything
that he had created, he declared his creation to be good.
But God had an idea, a final
step for his creation. He wanted to create something in his
image, and so he created us, the human race. And he created us male and female.
We were the crowning achievement of God. We are not automatons who are governed by animal instinct, but a creation like God with the power to
choose right or wrong even when that choice goes against what instinct might
demand of us. God, who is by his very
nature good, has always chosen what is right. And like God, we could have
chosen what is right as well. But we didn’t; we chose the wrong. And in making
that choice, we set a plan which our race has followed since the very
beginning. We could have chosen the moral path, but our choice of what is wrong made the choice of
what is right more difficult.
The Psalmist imagines a world
where everything that God created returns to praise his name; the mountains and the valleys, the clouds and all of
our God-designed weather, the birds of the air and the fish of the sea, as well as the mammals that roam the surface of the earth. And
finally, God
created us. And the Psalmist argues that along with the rest of creation, it is God’s crowning achievement that returns to praise his
name, the human race. God had created Adam and Eve, but he had also made them
dynamic. They were young at the moment of creation, but they grew old and then other younger members of the race replaced them. It is the pattern of life, one that
has been followed since the beginning of time.
And so, the Psalmist finishes this section declaring that
we, both young and old, male and female, will praise God. It might have been
this Psalm that the prophet Joel remembered as he wrote his prophecy that was
picked up by Peter on the day of Pentecost.
I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and
daughters will prophesy,
your old men will dream dreams,
your young men will see visions.
Even on my
servants, both men and women,
I will pour out my Spirit in those days (Joel 2:28-29).
Maybe
the Psalmist saw the reality of “those days” even before the prophet wrote his
prophecy of Christ. A day was coming when everything that we think is important
is declared to be unimportant. On that day, all that will matter is whether we
are worshippers of the one true God.
Today’s Scripture Reading: Psalms
149 & 150
No comments:
Post a Comment