JUST A SPECK, BUT AWESOME
June 15, 2014 by Ken Dale
Maybe I just think too much ? I don?t know ? but today my mind and heart are full. And the first creation story from Genesis only feeds that sense of awe I experience on this Father?s Day. I am awed that my son is now a Dad and it?s amazing to me to watch him with his son. I am very mindful of my Dad ? today would have been his 99th birthday and one of the many things my Dad instilled in me was the vastness of God?s creation. He was not ?religious? per say but he had a little book that was based on a picture of a family having a picnic on a blanket in the park. One part of the book kept zooming in so that a flea on the cat/dog was giant but it kept going down into the cells of that animals skin. The other part of the book zoomed out so that the whole family on a blanket became a dot in the middle of the city and the city then became a dot and eventually the earth became a dot and then the galaxy became dot and so on. Whether one zooms in or out the point was clear that life is a wondrous thing. By faith we affirm that life as gift of God.
The Psalm for today is Psalm 8 which sings to God, When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; 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. It?s really profound what we claim by faith. How vast is the universe and we know we are just specks on a speck, but we proclaim that God knows us, that God is mindful of us. By faith we affirm that mindfulness to be parental in nature.
We make that claim by faith not because of who we are or because of what we have accomplished ? but because of who God is and what God has accomplished. We know God as Creator ? and that God continues to create ? and we also know God has Father, Son and Holy Spirit ? or Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer. It brings to mind a favorite Psalm for me ? 139 that speaks of how we are fearfully and wonderfully made. We have been created with both an ability of self-awareness and an ability to transcend ourselves. Think of the depths of human experience we are capable of ? the deep joy of being in love, the deep love of being in relationship with one another ? in family, in friendship. How we can be moved within by the gifts of music or poetry.
Our worship this morning celebrates that Triune God through the gift music. And our worship is to place our focus not on ourselves but on God. The psalmist would remind us ? it?s not all about us ? it?s about God. And we know from hearing the story from Genesis, that God has created within us the very image of God.
How key it is then, as we seek to live faithfully in our relationships with God and with one another, that we are mindful of and intentionally seek to see that image of God. We have within us the image of God. When we look at the heavens and the work of God?s hands, the moon and the stars that God has established ? and wonder what human life is that God is so mindful of it ? specs on a spec in the scheme of the universe ? may we remember that if God is so mindful of it ? perhaps we should be too.
Amen.