Tag: nature

The Vastness of God’s Faithful Love (Psalm 108:3-4)

“I will give thanks to you, O Lord, among the peoples; I will sing praises to you among the nations. For your steadfast love is great above the heavens; your faithfulness reaches to the clouds.” (Psalm 108:3-4)

One of the greatest feats of humanity has been reaching the clouds. We can fly. We can launch rockets to space. We’ve sent men to the moon and sent probes to the edge of our solar system. And yet we’ve barely scratched the surface of the vastness of just our tiny sliver in the universe.

Humanity has always wondered at the vastness of the heavens. We feel small compared to the vastness of the sky, not to mention the magnitude of space. The heavens are bigger than we can fathom.

So when David wanted to find some analogy for the vastness of God’s faithful love, he turned to the sky and the clouds. In Psalm 108:4, he declares that God’s love is higher than the heavens and his faithfulness reaches the clouds. In other words, the magnitude of God’s faithful love for us is greater than we can fathom. The best we can do is look out at the clouds or the vastness of space. Then we get a small glimpse of the immensity of God’s faithful love for his people.

Thus, we can no more reach the end of God’s love for us than we can explore the farthest reaches of space. We can no more search out every square inch of God’s love than any one person could physically explore every square inch of the earth’s atmosphere. Paul described Christ’s love for us as a love that “surpasses knowledge” (Eph 3:19).

God shows us love vast as the heavens, beyond the magnitude of the sky, reaching beyond the farthest galaxies. And we taste of this love in Christ through his work of redemption. Here is a love beyond our comprehension, and we will spend all eternity exploring its vastness. This exploration should start now. We should pray with Paul that we would know more of the love of Christ that exceeds our comprehension.

As David sings in Psalm 108, the vastness of God’s love should lead us to worship. How can we respond to a faithful love that makes galaxies look small except with thanksgiving and praise? God’s love is to be marveled at and rejoiced in. We should stare often at its sheer magnitude so that our hearts might pour out the praises of our Creator and Redeemer.

Let us be careful that God’s love never becomes a stale cliche or a religious relic we mumble about on Sundays. Instead, let us pray together for the strength to comprehend the breadth, length, height, and depth of God’s love so that our hearts will truly resound with his praise (Eph 3:18-21).

This praise is not simply a personal or private practice. God’s faithful love should also spur us on to missions. David gives thanks and praises God among the peoples, among the nations. God has entrusted his people with the good news of his love revealed in Jesus. We should declare this good news to all nations. We should call all peoples to faith in God’s Son. And we should long to see all nations giving thanks and praising God because his love reaches beyond the heavens.

This week take some time to look up. Stare at the immensity of the sky, the sheer magnitude of the heavens. Let their vastness stir you to give glory to our God who made the sky, the clouds, and every galaxy. They declare God’s glory, including the glory of God’s faithful love for his people.

Spiders in Paradise (Genesis 1:24-25)

“And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds—livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.” And it was so. . . . And God saw that it was good.“(Genesis 1:24-25)

Were there spiders in the Garden of Eden? Did Adam and Eve wake up in that unfallen world and ever see spiderwebs glistening with dew? Were arachnids crawling and spinning webs from the trees of that paradise?

Maybe the very suggestion of spiders in paradise gives you the creeps. We usually picture Eden teeming with birds, cute, fuzzy animals, and beautiful trees and flowers—but spiders? They must be part of the later curse on creation, right? I certainly wouldn’t want any of those eight-legged creepers in my paradise!

I can’t give a definitive answer to these questions. But Genesis does tell us that with the animal kingdom, God also created everything that creeps on the ground (Gen 1:24). According to Old Testament scholar Gordon Wenham, the Hebrew word for “creeping things” (remeś) “refers to mice, reptiles, insects, and any other little creatures that keep close to the ground.”[1] It’s a broad, general word that very well could include spiders too. And after creating the animals and these creeping things, God saw that it was good (Gen 1:25).

Thus, Genesis 1:24-25 points to the creation of insects and maybe even arachnids. God created bugs. And it was good. God created ants, crickets, worms, and all the rest, and they joined the song of creation, praising the Creator. Unlike today, they must have lived in perfect harmony with the trees and other plant life (no worrying about aphids damaging apple trees in that garden!). And if there were spiderwebs in Eden, they may have had a different purpose than they do now. Regardless, Genesis points to the existence of creeping, crawling things in the Garden, maybe even spiders.

When we admire God’s creation, we often focus on sunsets, stars, mountains, and waterfalls. We focus on the obvious, marvelous strokes God has painted on the canvas of this world. But the small details also declare his glory. As Seth Lewis reminds us, God’s creation “is a message. It is the art gallery of reality, speaking as loudly as possible in the language of colours, textures, ancient stones and living scenes.”[2]

Even today, in our fallen world, the creeping things relay a message from our Creator. The goodness of the original creation still echoes in this fallen world. Crickets and cicadas sing a melody that exalts the Creator. The ants instruct us in the wisdom of God. And yes, perhaps even spiders have something to contribute to the praise of God and the edification of God’s people.

These thoughts about spiders and “creeping things” started when I tried to take down some spiderwebs outside our church building with a leaf blower. With the blower at full strength, pointed directly at a large, intricate web, I could not blow it free. It was strong, resilient, and also beautiful.

The design of a spider’s web is surely not the result of random chance. It also hardly seems like a mere result of God’s judgment on this world. Like stars and waterfalls, spiders and their webs testify to the creativity of God. They point to his power and his beauty.

In the words of the well-known hymn: “This is my Father’s world: The birds their carols raise, The morning light, the lily white, Declare their Maker’s praise. This is my Father’s world: He shines in all that’s fair.” Even in a spider’s web.

  1. Gordon Wenham, Genesis 1-15, Word Biblical Commentary, 25.↩︎
  2. Seth Lewis, The Language of Rivers and Stars: How Nature Speaks of the Glories of God, 25.↩︎