Dale Ridge church of Christ

Imagine flying in a plane around the earth.  How long would it take?  A beam of light can travel around the earth seven times in one second—that’s a distance of 186,000 miles.  That figures out to a distance of 6 trillion miles in a year.  This is called a “light year.”  While that distance, in and of itself, is beyond comprehension, eight billion of those same light years is only half-way across our universe!  Undeniably, God has “set his glory above the heavens.” 

The psalmist gazes up into this night sky and wonders how such a God who could create such marvels would even take notice of mankind.   Psalm 8 pictures mankind, in all of his comparative smallness with the heavens above, as the most valuable part of all of God’s creation.  In the previous article in this series, we saw that God has shown His value of us in that He made us a little lower than elohim (translated as “angels” in the KJV and “God” in the ASV).  Now, the psalmist adds a new aspect of our specialness.  He says, “For thou . . . hast crowned him with glory and honor” (Ps. 8:5b).  The words “glory” and “honor” describe royal attributes (Psalm 96:6). 

Now, this does not mean that we are somehow on or anywhere near the level of God as the Bible teaches (Isaiah 45:5).  However, it does remind us that we are made in the image of God (Genesis 1:26-27).  As a result, we are able to take on divine characteristics of God (2 Peter 1:4).  Of course, this does not mean that we can be omnipotent or omniscient or things like that, but we can imitate such divine characteristics as His holiness (1 Peter 1 15-16); His love (John 13:34); and, His kindness, tenderness, and forgiveness (Ephesians 4:32).  Surely, no other passage expresses the dignity of man as well as the 8^th Psalm.

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Filed under: Devotional, Michael Carter on August 2nd, 2008