Crowned With Glory and Honor

April 5, 2019

Crowned With Glory and Honor

“. . . what are mere mortals that you should think about them, human beings that you should care for them?

Psalm 8:4

Psalm 8 is a beautiful psalm of praise for God the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.

Whenever I read the Psalm, I remember a time when I had been visiting churches in Mexico several miles south of Matamoros. It was late on a Sunday, evening and I had just finishing preaching in the last church service for the day. My host took me to the home of one of his parishioners for supper. There was no ambient light, and it was very dark. As I looked up into the night sky, I was overwhelmed with the beauty, the majesty, of countless thousands of stars. My host immediately began quoting Psalm 8:3,

“When I look at the night sky and see the work of your fingers—

the moon and the stars you set in place—“

One of my joys in retirement has been to join the Asheville Astronomy Club which meets on the campus of UNC Ashville. Don’t read too much into that statement. Pointing out the moon is just about the limit of my specific knowledge of the night sky. But I love being exposed to and learning about the beauty and the mystery of the universe. However, of all the mysteries of the natural universe, in the next two verses in Psalm 8, the psalmist points to the greatest mystery of all time:

what are mere mortals that you should think about them,
    human beings that you should care for them?
Yet you made them only a little lower than God
    and crowned them with glory and honor.

Psalm 8:4-5

In view of the infinite expansiveness of the universe, I find this statement of the psalmist utterly astonishing. The nearest star, other than the sun, to our solar system is 4.2 light years away. Our solar system is 28,000 light years from the center of our Milky Way galaxy, and there are billions of galaxies in the universe. The psalmist says that in the entire universe, God thinks of us, God cares for us and has crowned us with glory and honor.

My Takeaway: The psalmist wasn’t just waxing eloquent as he stared into the night sky. The Apostle Paul affirmed the vision of the psalmist as being fulfilled in the redemptive work of Christ Jesus: “For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago” (Ephesians 2:10). My challenge is to live each day with the abiding truth that I am God’s masterpiece, and He has crowned me with glory and honor. I invite you to join me in this challenge.

Sē’lah

Alex

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(Selah is a word that appears in the Book of Psalms that I often use as the Complimentary Closing in my correspondence. Its meaning, as I use the word, is to pause and think about these things.)

These meditations are written by Alex M. Knight as he seeks the life in Christ as his way of life.  The meditations are published on the BLOG, http://seekingthelifeinchrist.blogspot.com/ and they are also distributed on the Constant Contact email server. You may subscribe to this email service by sending an email to: amkrom812@gmail.com. The BLOG is also available on Amazon Kindle, by subscription.

Publications by Alex M. Knight:

·        Seeking the Life in Christ, Meditations on the New Testament and Psalms has been published and is now available at Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle.

·        The second edition of First Think – Then Pray is available on Amazon Kindle.

·        Meditations on The Story of My Life as told by Jesus Christ has been released as an e-book on Amazon Kindle.

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the New Living Translation (NLT) Holy Bible, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.