In Psalm 8 the psalmist says, "When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained...I think...what is man that Thou dost take thought of Him...?"
In reading John Piper's "A Godward Life", I was taken by these paragraphs. Contemplating the greatness of our God is the remedy for much that ails us. I share these thoughts with you...take time to read, acknowledge and be amazed.
The moon rises about 240,000 miles above the earth, soaring about 500,000 times higher than the highest fireworks. The moon travels at 2,300 miles per hour in its outward serenity around the earth, which is probably five times faster than fireworks. The moon is 2,160 miles in diameter (from San Francisco to Cleveland). It weighs 81 quintillion tons (three more zeros than a trillion). It has mountain ranges with peaks almost as high as Mount Everest. It has empty seas 750 miles across and craters 146 miles wide and 20,000 feet deep.
The power of the moon is unimaginable. Nothing on earth that man has ever made can compare. Every day the moon takes the oceans of the earth and lifts them quietly; millions upon millions upon millions of tons of water quietly and irresistibly lifted into the air. In Boston the tide recedes ten feet. In Eastport, Maine, it recedes nineteen feet. In Nova Scotia, in the Bay of Fundy, the tides vary up to fourty-three feet.
The moon is an awesome thing. If you stood in the sunlight on the moon, the fluids in your body would boil, but if you walked into the shadow of a large rock, you would quickly freeze solid.
But who sees the moon? Who stands in awe of the moon? Who looks at the moon on any night and especially Independance Night when there are manmade fireworks to watch? Who notices the really great things in life? No wonder we are oblivious to the glory of God when there are such clear parables of our blindness built into everyday experience.
Then call this to mind, that the moon is but a reflection of the sun, which quietly keeps its ninety-three-million-mile distance lest we be consumed. Then think that the sun is but a medium-size star. Then think that God created them all and leads them out by number and calls them by name. "Because of the greatness of His might and strength of His power, not one of them is missing" (Isaiah 40:26).
Read your emotional barometer. Do the amazements and delights of your life correspond to God's reality? Or do they rise and fall on the passing waves of human glitz.
Selah...
Mitch
