Our Place, Our Job – Psalm 8

A text – Psalm 8

¹ O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens.
² Out of the mouths of babes and infants you have founded a bulwark because of your foes, to silence the enemy and the avenger.

³ When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established;
⁴ what are humans that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?

⁵ Yet you have made them a little lower than Godand crowned them with glory and honor.
⁶ You have given them dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under their feet,
⁷ all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field,
⁸ the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas.

⁹ O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

A reflection:

Psalm 8 gets us looking up in the heavens at the bigness of the universe. It also marvels that, though we are only specks in the great scheme of things, our Creator has given us a place of dominion. We are under a Sovereign God, and all earthly things are under our feet.

Many have, over time, taken this to mean that we can do whatever we want with what is under our feet. But dominion is not the same as domination. While it is true that you can define dominion as control, control also means stewardship or protection of what is in your domain. When I was working toward my Ph.D., my favorite mentors and fellow scholars were the ones always talking about getting knowledge of their “domain” so they could further enhance the field, take care of what needed taking care of, advancing knowledge to make it better. If we felt that way about the things the psalmist says are “under our feet,” we would consider them like our own children, protected, nurtured, and with a brighter future than our own.

As humans we can fail spectacularly at having dominion over stuff. But we can also succeed. I heard recently once again that many bird varieties are diminishing, some at risk of disappearing. But in the next minute I heard that there has been an upsurge in birdwatching, bird tracking, and bird habitat replenishment, just as thousands planted milkweed to help the monarch butterflies succeed in their migration. We have a problem in the natural world, but God has already placed a solution there: us. God gives us these marvelous creatures, and one another, so that together we can steward the world we have been given. We are but specks in the vast universe. But if we remember the job God asks us to do and find ways to do it together, we have a place to occupy. How majestic is God’s name in all the earth!

A prayer:

Lord God, Thank you for loving us. Thank you for all of creation and for our little part in it. Help us to remember we have stewardship to accomplish. Help us to be on the lookout for people who can work with us to those ends. Amen.