Psalm 8 (NRSV)
Read Psalm 8 on biblegateway.com
Verse 1O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens.
Verse 2Out of the mouths of babes and infants you have founded a bulwark because of your foes, to silence the enemy and the avenger.
Verse 3When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established;
Verse 4what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?
Verse 5Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor.
Verse 6You have given them dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under their feet,
Verse 7all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field,
Verse 8the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas.
Verse 9O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
Devotion
While reading this psalm it is easy to focus exclusively on the wondrous creation and the exalted human status as "a little less than God." Sure it is that we are to marvel at the vastness and beauty of the heavens and at the incredibly complex wonder that is man. But there is a "prior to" and a "subsequent to" our amazement at the created grandeur. Look at how the Psalm begins and ends:
O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is thy name in all the Earth!
The creation, and we who people it, are most alive when we know ourselves as evidence of God's marvelous handiwork, most alive when our being cries out, "O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is thy name in all the Earth!"
Prayer
You are good, Almighty God, to have placed us in the awesome universe. We praise you for your goodness, and we praise you for your creative majesty, and we thank you for sharing it all with us mortals. Through Christ we pray. Amen