Listen

Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name throughout the earth! You made your glory higher than heaven! From the mouths of nursing babies you have laid a strong foundation because of your foes, in order to stop vengeful enemies. When I look up at your skies, at what your fingers made— the moon and the stars that you set firmly in place— what are human beings that you think about them; what are human beings that you pay attention to them? You’ve made them only slightly less than divine, crowning them with glory and grandeur. You’ve let them rule over your handiwork, putting everything under their feet— all sheep and all cattle, the wild animals too, the birds in the sky, the fish of the ocean, everything that travels the pathways of the sea. Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name throughout the earth!

Psalm 8

Think

Dolphins surfing in the waves, generations-old redwoods shading hikers, monarchs dancing in the breeze, bees amidst their hum helping cherry tomatoes grow — God’s handiwork amazes me in the skies above, the pathways of the seas, and earth itself, yielding sustenance and beauty.

The psalmist sings in awe that God, the source of such majesty, pays attention to human beings too! Despite humankind’s choices made long ago in the gardens of Genesis and Gethsemane, and despite the reality of the mistakes we each make each day, God continually cares for us!

Humbled to be part of this family of God, how are we called to pay better attention? I wonder what God really is thinking of us when we too often choose exploitation rather than stewardship, of each other and of the natural world. How might we need to change our daily living to continually care for the whole majesty of the family of God — the butterflies, the bees, the birds, the oceans, the trees, each other, and the very earth itself?

Molly Logan

Pray

Loving God, you know me. You pay attention to me. You care for me on days when I honor you and on days when I make choices that are less than majestic. Help me to better care for the fullness of the family of God — the earth and waters and creatures and all humankind around the world who delight and struggle in the everyday of life on this earth. Amen.

Go

This is love: it is not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son as the sacrifice that deals with our sins.

Dear friends, if God loved us this way, we also ought to love each other.

1 John 4:10-11

As a beloved member of the family of God, choose to be that love to our world today.