Carving Canyons

 

Hey, Cobblestone,

     In the midst of reading Psalm 150 out loud, this happened: Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him (lightning!) in his mighty heavens. Praise him for his acts of power; praise him… (thunder!) for his surpassing greatness. Call it a responsive reading, a thunderstorm and me.

     It’s early Thursday morning and I’ve just come in from my east-facing front porch, shelter from the rain but front row seat for the flashes and rumblings. This is January, I have to remind myself. How could this happen? Simple: the LORD our God said to a warm, wet air mass in the South, “Go north.” And it went. “Baruch atah, Adonai Elohim (blessed are you, LORD our God), King of the universe – who stirs the storm.”

     In my neighbor Matt’s yard, the dainty solar powered lights, off for the past few hours, awaken with each lightning flash: “Oh… what? Hello! Good morning! Um… morning?” And off again. Repeat, at the Conductor’s command: on together, off separately. And then the ground shakes. I’m expecting the very rocks to cry out. Maybe they did, in chorus with thunder, and my ears couldn’t tell the difference. On it went for a certain time, followed by the still small voice of a slow soaking rain. “Baruch atah, Adonai Elohim, King of the universe – who stills the storm.”

     If I could snap my fingers and make one single verse of Scripture known and believed in all mankind, it would be this one:

    Know that the LORD, he is God!

            It is he who made us, and we are his;

            we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture (Psalm 100:3).

     Why that one? Let me count the ways. Whose pasture? His. Whose people? His. Meaning of life? As the old catechism says, “To glorify God and enjoy him forever.” Sanctity of life? What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor (Psalm 8:4-5). Any more questions? One verse of Scripture, known and believed, can open the door to every answer.

     You must understand this, Church: Every particle of creation answers to the LORD our God. There’s not a hurricane or an earthquake or the twitch of a sparrow’s eye that happens aside from his command. Every drop of rain – every drop, mind you – surely achieves the purpose for which he sent that drop. Is it outside the realm of possibility that one random son of God, with his feeble predawn voicing reading the one hundred and fiftieth of one hundred and fifty Psalms, could have been written into symphony with the power of the heavens? Oh, not outside the realm at all. Because here’s the thing: There’s no such thing as random.

     The King of the universe will engineer your next breath and your next heartbeat. Repeat – or not. He will cause his rain to fall on the just and the unjust. As our departed brother, R.C. Sproul, was fond of saying, “If there is even one maverick molecule in all the universe, we may not expect that any one of God’s promises will come true.” And he would follow, of course, with, “But there isn’t.” Does that make God worthy of praise? Care to bet your life on it? Your eternity? Relax… it’s not a bet.

     The only moral agency being exercised in all creation is happening right here on earth, right now, by God’s image-bearers. Sun/moon/stars, elephant/eagle/caterpillar are, each and every one, locked into the intricacies and immensities of God’s plan. Only we humans are given space and time to choose whatever. (Please don’t miss the operative word: given.) So, what do we do with that?

     Praise is the key to exercising moral agency that aligns with God’s glory and commissions us as co-regents in his creation. What – you thought it involved being smarter or better or gritting your teeth harder? Nope. Praise. It starts there or it doesn’t start at all. The theme runs throughout the history of our people. In his ugliest moment, Adam didn’t praise God, though he could have. In their better moments, Noah and Abraham and Miriam and David did. And when they didn’t… well, the record is there for all to see. Paul wrote, For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out… Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? (Romans 7:18-19, 24). Thankfully, he was able to follow these gloomy exclamations with praise: Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! (verse 25).

     Through a convoluted plot, the 1991 movie Grand Canyon brings a widely diverse group of people together at the rim of the title character, where their separate problems melt away in the vastness. Really? It’s a hole in the ground. Science tells us of a canyon on Mars that makes our “Grand” the same as a back-alley pothole. But know this: One and the same God carved both. In the opposite direction, the spires of the great cathedrals are designed to draw the eyes of men upward to God. I’ve stood on the plaza in front of the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist in Savannah, Georgia – my eyes are drawn upward, for sure, and then I start wondering what it was like for the stonemasons who climbed onto rickety scaffolding every day for years on end, only to set some frilly detail no one would ever see up close again. Spires are nice, but let us please show preference for the praise offered up by the saint himself, John’s declaration concerning Jesus: He must increase, but I must decrease (John 3:30).

     The human heart is designed to praise; it’s a well established fact. What or who is praised is up to the human heart – also by design. What better theme than to praise the designer? The human intellect and physical strength make wonderful companions to a heart full of praise to their Maker. Are you stuck? Praise God! Are you lost? Praise God! Are you so full of joy that a cartwheel seems the only right response? What else can I say? Praise God! On one particularly glorious day, I paced back and forth on the front porch of our church building, playing what could be called a “praise game.” I would start by reciting, “Baruch atah, Adonai Elohim, King of the universe…” and try to remember one of his praiseworthy deeds by the time I said, “who…” It went on for, um, I don’t know how long. It was a while. If you’re assuming no one else was at the building at the time, you’d be right. But hey, if you come by sometime and see me pacing the porch, reciting a scant piece of Hebrew, by all means, jump right in!

     So far I’ve only seen the Grand Canyon from high in the air. Later this year I hope to get down into it. My boots, along with the Colorado River – which runs crazy or lazy at God’s bidding – will do some of the carving. But I promise not to forget who the real sculptor is.

     If possible in this moment, read aloud – and with gusto – the closing words of the Psalm I opened with:

Let everything that has breath praise the LORD!

Praise the LORD! (Psalm 150:6).

    Now what do you hear?

 

    Praise is the way – Hallelujah!

 

 Grace and Peace (from the one worthy of all praise),

 

John