Few things proclaim God’s greatness more than the glory of the heavens.
And few writings, if any, describe that glory more eloquently than Psalm 19 – all in four short verses:
1. The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
2. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge.
3. They have no speech; they use no words; no sound is heard from them.
4. 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.
The psalmist’s description lines up with the songwriter’s: “When thru the woods and forest glades I wander” – writes Carl Bobert – “and hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees when I look down from lofty mountain grandeur and hear the brook and feel the gentle breeze – Then sings my soul …!
You can almost see the writer with a pen in his hand and a blank sheet of paper, soaking in the beauty of nature’s presence so he can put it on the page. Perhaps open before him, too, is the nineteenth psalm.
The psalmist chooses to personify the heavens, portraying them as stepping forth each day and each night to make a great announcement: The Lord is majestic, and His glory extends far beyond what our eyes can behold. His glory is as vast, unfathomable, infinite, and boundless as the heavens themselves, and even more.
He frames the heavens as if they are stacked one on top of the other – the moon, planets, stars, and sun – stacked in order, for they have all been “ordained” by God Himself (Ps. 8). The “firmament” (KJV) is so very vast in its expanse and spread out like a tent for the sun, moon, and stars to dwell in. They are not haphazard, random – no, they are “firm,” fixed, the work of God’s fingers, knit together in unison like a woman knitting a quilt that would cover the sky.
This glory we see in the daylight as the sun takes over the entire expanse, and we see it still when the sun hands the baton each evening to the nighttime for the moon and stars to rule – no, not just rule, to proclaim with all they have of God’s greatness and majesty.
We will always do well to begin our days as the songwriter does, and the psalmist, taking in all the sights and sounds of the heavens, even though its speech is quiet and its seamless message is in its beauty alone.
Every day is a blank page, and we stroll through the day, and the night, adding the words and lessons from the heavens and nature to describe a glory that we can only feel when we dig deep down in our souls.
And then, as I searched for the right words to try to describe the indescribable, I came upon this next sentence. I’ve said often that perhaps one of my friends could read this sentence when they come together one day when my own course has run its course, just as the sun does in the evening. Here’s that sentence, perhaps the longest I’ve ever written:
We walk through the woods and forest glades, we listen to the birds singing in the trees, we look out over the lofty mountains, we listen to the of the humming of the creek in the woods, we look up at the heavens that declare God’s glory abundantly, we examine the stars and the galaxies and the constellations – and by the time our day and night are done, we have a novel complete, filled with God’s glories, read over and over, declared to all who will listen, expressed in prayer and praise, and stored down in our souls, so much so that we can look up once more before the baton is passed from the night to the day, or the day to the night, and sing, “Then sings my soul, my Savior God to thee” – a day and a night – a life! – well spent.
Coach Steven Ray Bowen served as a teacher and basketball coach at Red Oak High from 1998-2012 and recently came out of retirement twice for teaching tours at Ferris and Waxahachie High Schools. He and his wife Marilyn (the “amazin’ blonde”) have slowed down some of their travels and reconvened in their evangelistic work with the Church of Christ of Red Oak at Uhl/Ovilla Roads, in addition to Coach’s work as a writer and author, including the working to publish “Crossing The Georgia Line” that ran in the Ellis County Press. Call or text (972) 824-5197, email coachbowen1984@gmail.com, and see frontporchgospel.com.