Monday Devotional: February 26, 2024

Bible Reading: Psalm 19:1-6 (CEB)

¹ Heaven is declaring God’s glory; the sky is proclaiming his handiwork. ² One day gushes the news to the next, and one night informs another what needs to be known. ³ Of course, there’s no speech, no words—their voices can’t be heard—⁴ but their sound[a] extends throughout the world; their words reach the ends of the earth. God has made a tent in heaven for the sun. ⁵ The sun is like a groom coming out of his honeymoon suite; like a warrior, it thrills at running its course. ⁶ It rises in one end of the sky; its circuit is complete at the other. Nothing escapes its heat.

One evening a few years ago, I took my children to a remote farm, away from the noise and lights of Knoxville. A farmer had created a maze in one of his cornfields and was charging school kids and parents for the fun of getting lost in it. The youngsters quickly disappeared into the raspy rows of cornstalks. I stepped away to a pasture where the cars were parked.

The faint glow of twilight outlined the horizon. A thin husk of moon hung in the sky, punctuated by the brightness of the evening star. Suddenly as I gazed, the blue-black sky gained depth, and I sensed the whirling of planets and moon through space, speeding me on unimaginable paths. Terror gripped me. Like a kid on a runaway merry-go-round, I felt I might be flung into that inky sky. Instinctively, I wanted to flatten myself against the earth to keep from being hurled into the void. I knew immediately that I was in the presence of the Holy. I became aware of my true place in the world.

That overwhelming awe, tinged with terror, is what the psalmist celebrates in the first verse of Psalm 19. “How clearly the sky reveals God’s glory!” (TEV) Accustomed to a desert sky unobscured by human activity, the psalmist can readily grasp the universe as the incarnation of the Creator. Yet, the psalmist tells us, “No speech or words are used, no sound is heard” (TEV).

Though words are needed to sing of the experience, the psalmist wisely celebrates the wordlessness of the sacred wisdom that emanates from God’s universe.

Prayer

God of creation, help us see behind our words to your deeper wisdom. Amen.

By Bill Dockery, The Upper Room Disciplines 2015, page 73.

Lenten Bible Study

NO ZOOM BIBLE STUDY AND PRAYER MEETING THIS WEEK AND NEXT WEEK.