These past few days have been full of awe for me… awe at who my God is, how powerful He is, how He works, and what He’s done for me. I’d like to share a tidbit with you.
When I woke up late New Year’s Day morning, I was still under this awe I’ve been talking about. I also wanted to spend some time in my Bible… sort of dedicating this year to Him.
So I turned to Psalms.
I flipped through and found my way to Psalm 29, which was one of those written by David. Let me show you what I found… what blew my mind.
The first two verses are basically commands to worship the Lord because only He is worthy… something we know, but I think we don’t really have a clue how worthy He really is. Perhaps David agreed, for he then went on to describe not God in His entirety, but merely God’s voice. Look at some of his descriptions.
The voice of the Lord is like thunder. We’re kind of used to that analogy.
The voice of the Lord is powerful and majestic. To me, majestic means that it would blow our mind if we could really see it or fully comprehend its power.
It is so powerful, David continues on to say, that it breaks the cedars of Lebanon. Now, the cedars of Lebanon were considered to be the most perfect building material of the day. This is what David and Solomon used for their palaces and what Solomon paid a king’s ransom for, to build the Lord’s temple. It was the best of the best… and the Lord’s voice could break it! If David were living today, he would have said that the Lord’s voice can break the strongest steel girders used in the largest sky-scrapers and the toughest materials NASA has developed for the extreme temperatures space craft must endure.
His voice not only makes mountains move, but it makes them skip and dance!
His voice cuts fire and shapes it however He wills it to be. Are you all aware that stars are fire? I’m going to back up for a moment here.
I’m not sure how many of you who lurk around this blog watched the two YouTube videos I posted last week. My sister was the only one who commented… and quite honestly, I don’t know how anyone could watch them and not be blown away by the power of God. Since no one else commented, I’m going to assume that, perhaps, many of you are on Internet connections that don’t show videos well… or that you were (understandably) too busy to watch it. So here is a brief text version of the first two videos… just to make sure that the page you’re on is somewhere near where I’m at right now.
Here are the planets in our Solar System:
See earth there? Not all that big… especially compared to Jupiter, which is 318 times more massive than this planet we call home.
Now let’s add the sun… you know, that star from which the earth and everything on it derives all of its energy… which is thankfully 90+ million miles away, otherwise it would incinerate us, because it is one sample of the fire that God’s voice cut and shaped.
Jupiter no longer looks all that big. Neither does Earth… but at least we can still see it.
But lest you think that the sun is big…
Here are a few more stars. Earth is now invisible… not to mention you and me, who find our home somewhere on it and like to pretend that what life has dealt us is a big deal.
I’m not done yet, for Arcturus isn’t the largest star man has managed to somehow measure. Let’s go up a few more star-sizes:
Find Arcturus. See the massively huge star we call the Sun? That tiny pin-prick which, a few seconds ago made Earth look like a pin-prick? Can you see it?
Ready to go bigger?
The largest star that man has managed to measure is Canis Majoris. Let’s see what it would look like next to our Sun:
Now here’s the kicker… straight out of the Bible. Let’s go to Psalm 33:6. It says, “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of His mouth all their host.”
Think about it! With every breath that you or I take, we breath out microscopic molecules of all kinds of things. But when God speaks, he breathes out stars.
He breathes out stars! He shaped them with His voice!
Let’s go back to Psalm 29.
God’s voice also causes the wilderness to whirl around, and can strip the leaves off every tree in every forest of the world, because of its power. That statement is now quite understandable. If He breathes out stars, then stripping the forests of their leaves would take only the tiniest puff.
And it is this God who was King when the Flood covered the earth (which now seems like it wasn’t really all that big a deal), who is King today, and will remain King forever.
Those facts alone are amazing. In David’s weak, human words, he does his best to describe just a little of how powerful God’s voice is… something which modern science can now give us a slightly better grasp of.
But that’s not the end of the Psalm.
There are two more statements. The first is that this powerful God gives strength to His people… and if anyone would have strength to spare, I think it would be a God whose mere voice has so much power we can’t comprehend it. And somehow, despite the vastness of Him and the smallness of us, He cares about us enough to want to lend us His strength.
But get this… the last line of this Psalm.
This God, whose voice can make mountains dance… this voice that releases so much power that it formed and shaped stars that are billions of times larger than us… He uses His voice in yet another way. All that power… all that majesty and glory… is turned toward little tiny microscopic-in-comparison us. And He speaks and releases His power again…
…to bless us with peace.
“The Lord will bless His people with peace.” – Psalm 29:11
Does this mean anything to you? Does anyone else feel compelled to say, “Wow?”
Wow. Wow.
And this ‘breath’ is the Spirit of God. Powerful. Active. Mighty. Gentle. Kind. Soft. Amazing.
I love your writing Katie! Our pastor did a sermon on how much God loves us that he created us… little old us, with the same slides of the universe… I think that is WOW! Just as you said… GOD is incredible, mighty, powerful and he did all that just for us!
Excellent!
Annie kindly pointed out the similar theme interweaving in your post and my most recent one.
Concerning David’s last ‘line’ you mentioned: Personally, i would be a heck of a lot more impressed with God’s ‘opinion’ of us puny humans (comparatively speaking) if David had been able to write
“And God HAS Blessed His people with Peace”.
He certainly isn’t doing anything like that in – for want of a better phrase – ‘The Holy Land’ right now.
Or at pretty much any time over the last 4000 years come to that.
I’d have hoped that at Sometime and SOMEWHERE on this planet there would have evolved a group of humans who actually manage to live a life of Peace dedicated solely to the love of God and our fellow man, just to show us it can be done in practice and not just in theory.
But of course God gave Satan power over the Earth so i’m not holding my breath for that to come about down here.
History and the odds lend me to believe that particular ‘power’ won’t be relinquishing ‘control’ down here in my lifetime.
Still ‘love’ hopes for all things… 🙂
(b)love
I don’t want to be talking at cross-purposes here, if love was purposefully only talking about world peace.
But for those who read this blog and these comments, I feel I need to clarify.
The peace that God has blessed us with… as in it is already here… is inside of us. It’s not in the world, and it won’t be until Jesus has his 1000 year reign. There is no point in even hoping there will be world peace before then. As love said, sin reigns on the earth, and as long as that is the case, “There will be wars and rumors of wars. Kingdoms will rise against kingdoms.” (Matt. 24:6-7 Fathers will rise against sons, sons against fathers, and brothers against brothers.” (Matt. 10:21)
But the peace that Jesus is Prince of… that peace IS here. He brought it when He came. But He doesn’t force it on us. He’s merely made it available. The more I come to know God… the more I seek to know Him more… the more I submit my life to Him… the more His peace becomes manifest inside of me and the more I realize just how powerful that peace is. Peace that is dependant on external circumstances is a weak thing. But peace that is so powerful, that I can stand in the middle of a storm and not be shaken? That’s powerful, and that’s the peace that God has spoken into us.
Nicely put.
I was addressing the concept of peace to a people as a whole, not considering the individual kind.
It always pays however to read the entire chapter a bible quote is taken from and never rely solely upon someone’s selectivity (you’d have thought i’d have learned that before now but i clearly failed to act on this for my first comment – i have redressed that error).
The single word ‘will’ is open to interpretation in the single line but becomes clearer when read with the rest of the Psalm 29.
With regard to the last paragraph though, while i can see where you are going with it your preceding quotes reminded me of the Words of Jesus Christ: “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law:
36 and a man`s foes [shall be] they of his own household.
” Matt 10:34-36.
Those who are in Christ (Truly) shall know their own internal peace and be at peace with all who are the same, while those who only claim to bear His Name without understanding, or who deny Him, those shall be for ever at war with the same.
i was hoping the internal Peace could be ‘externalised’ to cover a whole people who might come together to form a unified society while ‘down here’… but that seems to be a Hope to far?
blove
I see what you’re talking about…. and I do think it’s wonderful how so many verses can have so many different meanings.
If I’m understanding you right now, your looked-for “example” of peace will hopefully be found in the world-wide body of Christ? That’s something that those who claim to be part of the body of Christ, all too often aren’t the slightest bit interested in living in peace with the other sections. Yet, as you pointed out, those who are TRULY in Christ will be at peace with those are are also TRULY in Christ. Because the body of Christ does not war against itself. A body only fights itself when some portion of it is infected or cancerous. (And that’s a whole new analogy that could probably be taken quite a ways!)
I think it will be interesting to see exactly what the bride of Christ looks like as we get closer to His return for it!
That’s it! 🙂
Although i was also originally a little misled in my thinking – and expression of same. (Because i did not see enough of the whole picture you were referring to, scripturally speaking – you were shwoing a very large ‘picture’ to start this post with 😉 )
In my first comment , a part of me was attempting to place a human overlay on top of a spiritual foundation instead of the other way around – something i think many people do when it comes to their religion – and i feel that is a fatal error. The spiritual is always to be superior (‘above’ or laid on top of our human way of looking at things).
I was ‘hoping’ for a human society as a united whole that showed the rest of the world how they could live at peace and profitably – renewably in an ongoing way for time everlasting here on earth.
I doubt such will ever eventuate, or at least not without direct divine intervention – humans have never shown sufficient cpacity to develop such here on their own.
Perhaps because we seem incapable of developing His Truth inside of any of us sufficiently to be able to live together peacefully with large numbers of other humans without coming across as some kind of ‘threat’ that is ultimately attacked and destroyed ‘down here’ by the rest of a (or some) society’s.:-(
blove