How Manifold Are Your Works

My first and deepest experiences of God came from the natural world. Only there do I feel most at home, least aware of myself, the deepest peace. I still cannot believe that I am so lucky as to live in a place where I can walk out into that world every morning, to see the dawning light in an endless sky, where plants and birds gradually emerge from the darkness. It empties me for the rest of the day.

Psalm 104 is one of my favorite psalms for that reason. The psalmist intimately knew the natural world and saw the finger of God everywhere, from the beasts of the field to the birds of the air, through plants and trees and rock badgers and mountain goats. Even the labor of humans is seen as part of the cycle of God’s creation.

In the book of Job, God as Creator has an overwhelming transcendence. The writing is astonishing in its anthropomorphism, beautiful in its poetry. “Where were you?” God asks the miserable, irritated Job. “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?...who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?” – a passage that never fails to bring tears to my eyes, for the sheer joy of creation.

One might think that a scientist would be sighing at all of this pre-scientific thought. Yet it precisely illumines the limits of science. A mechanistic view of the world, which science necessarily takes, does not provide for joy and beauty except as evolutionary adaptations needed for the continuation of the species (or perhaps incidental to our existence, which is even worse). Can I be faulted for preferring morning stars that sing together?

I can forget myself in the natural world, but it is in the world of people that I choose to dwell. And where there are people, there are the Jameses and Johns who want to get ahead of their fellow travelers. Jesus has a few words for them. One is know what you are asking. James and John said that they could drink the cup of Jesus and be baptized with him, and indeed James was later killed by the sword. At least John, tradition tells us, lived to a ripe old age.

Jesus also talks about servanthood: “Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant…For the Son of man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” The self-emptying that is necessary in order to serve others is not so different from the loss of self-awareness I experience in the natural world. Maybe that is why a morning walk prepares me so well for a day among people. If I start the day lost among the joy of creation, I am less likely to magnify my importance among fellow travelers. O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all.


Pentecost 20 – Job 38:1-7(34-41); Psalm 104:1-9,25,37b; Hebrews 5:1-10; Mark 10:35-45