Week 21: Day 5
Have you felt God communicate with you through nature and creation? Join Joe for the final reflection of the week, delving into Psalm 19
The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun. It is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, like a champion rejoicing to run his course. It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other; nothing is deprived of its warmth.
Intro: Our last Orbit of the week (sad face!)... But welcome, for those who are just joining today, it’s great to have you! I love the psalms so I’m really excited to digging into Psalm 19 with you today. Why don’t we turn to Psalm 19 and we will read verses 1-6. Why not follow with me.
Bible: The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun. It is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, like a champion rejoicing to run his course. It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other; nothing is deprived of its warmth.
Thoughts: I am a visual person. I don’t know if you know what type of learner you are but I am so visual and I really connect with God through seeing him in nature. The focus of these six verses is on what we see when we look up. Sometimes we do forget to look up, don’t we? Whether that’s because we are on our phone or whatever, but in any case, we do sometimes forget to look up. But these verses do focus on what we see when we look up.
And of course, God made more than what we see when we look up. David doesn’t mean to say that the skies speak of God but the earth doesn’t or that the ocean or the lakes and trees and birds and animals and flowers and mountains don’t. Everything that God has made speaks.
In verse 2 it says the skies and heavens “pour forth speech”- God speaks through what he has made and we can hear from God not through just what we hear, or what we read in scripture, but in the beauty of nature.
God might be speaking in a way that might be different to just speech. In verse 3, David (the writer of this psalm) says “they have no speech”. In other words, God’s way of communicating with us – the thing that carries the reality from his heart to my heart – is not written words, or spoken words, instead it’s light, colour, beauty, design, mountains, seas, sunsets. God has way more to say to us than we what we just read – we can look up and hear him.
But it’s not just nature for nature’s sake. Genesis says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Nature reflects the Creator, reflects the Glory of God! It goes on to say “the heavens declare the glory of God”. When we the see the sun, moon, clouds, sky, stars, sunrises, sunsets, mountains, wee know that this was made, designed and created by God and it reflects God’s beauty!
I recently had Covid and so I stayed inside quite a lot and when I went outside for a walk for the first time, I walked to our local park and saw the most amazing sunset... I knew, without the need for words or speech or any reasons, that this is a reflection of God’s beauty.
When we limit God speaking to us to just words we miss so much! God wants to show us himself in so many different ways. Yes, we can find God in scripture. Yes, we can meet with his Holy Spirit. But we can also see and know God when we see the beauty of his creation – a reflection of God.
Prayer: I want to pray for us that God would open the eyes of our hearts, so that we would see you in Nature God. That we look up to see your beauty and what you might be saying to us, not just through words, but through your creativity and beauty. I pray that we may see you in a way we have never seen before. Amen
Silence: And now a few moments of silence for you to pray, reflect on these ideas, or simply sit and be still.
Action: My final challenge for this week is to look up. Today. Look up. Be open to seeing God in all of your life, let him speak to you not just through words, but through nature and all that he has made.
Outro: That's it for today's Orbit. Thanks so much for joining me this week!