Today's thought:
Psalm 148:3-4 & 7-10, "Praise him, sun and moon; praise him, all you shining stars. Praise him, you highest heavens and you waters above the skies... Praise the LORD from the earth, you great sea creatures and all ocean depths, lightning and hail, snow and clouds, stormy winds that do his bidding, you mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars, wild animals and all cattle, small creatures and flying birds..."
All creation worships God. We rarely stop to think about that. Ever go for a walk in nature, slip into a deep mysterious woods, cast your line into a bubbling brook, look upon a meadow desert of sequoia cactus, hear the distant roar of a misting waterfall, watch a sea of grass roll and wink in a gentle breeze, be lulled to sleep by the rhythmic lapping of salty waves? There is a sense that comes over us. Many interpret that as a closeness to God. Perhaps what we sense is the worship of creation, worshipping its Creator for creating it. There is a sound to creation as it operates as it was created to. It is called bioacoustics.
Research in the field of bioacoustics has revealed that every day we are surrounded by millions of ultrasonic songs. Did you know, for instance, that the electron shell of the carbon atom produces the same harmonic scale as the Gregorian chant? Or that whale songs can travel thousands of miles underwater? Or that meadowlarks have a range of three hundred notes? Supersensitive sound instruments have discovered that even earthworms make faint staccato sounds! Arnold Summerfield, the German physicist and pianist, observed that a single hydrogen atom, which emits one hundred frequencies, is more musical than a grand piano, which only emits eighty-eight frequencies.
Science writer Lewis Thomas summed it up it this way: "If we had better hearing, and could discern the [singing] of sea birds, the rhythmic [drumming] of schools of mollusks, or even the distant harmonics of [flies] hanging over meadows in the sun, the combined sound might lift us off our feet." [Adapted from Mark Batterson, All In (Zondervan, 2013), pp. 118-119]
All creation worships it's Creator. When we lift our praise to God we join a larger song of worship. We are the only aspect of that song that is voluntarily offered. God is seeking those who will join the song. Jesus said, "Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks" (John 4:23).
What creation does best for us is to point our attention to the Creator. Then we can worship Him. Makoto Fujimura, Christian artist and thinker, said, "Perhaps the greatest thing we can do as a Christian community is to behold. Behold our God. Behold his creation. The church has exiled beauty from its conversations, and I think that we need to rediscover the beautiful in order to recover ourselves—our humanity. Jesus seemed to indicate that beauty is a door into the Gospel."
Prayer: Mighty Creator, when we consider the works of Your hands, we bow in awe before You. Your power, majesty, imagination, knowledge and love etched into Your creation calls us to praise Your name and join the song of what You have made. We praise You! For You alone deserve glory, honor and praise, forever! In Jesus name, amen.