Self. Stars. Significance.

A – O LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!

B – You have set your glory
above the heavens.
C – From the lips of children and infants
you have ordained praise
because of your enemies,
to silence the foe and the avenger.

D – When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
E – what is man that you are mindful of him,
the son of man that you care for him?
E’ – You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.

D’ – You made him ruler over the works of your hands;
you put everything under his feet:
C’ – all flocks and herds,
and the beasts of the field,
B’ – the birds of the air,
and the fish of the sea,
all that swim the paths of the seas.

A’ – O LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!

It’s always fun whenever I am reading a passage and I find a chiasm. I get a little giddy like a school girl and start metaphorically jumping for joy! I borrowed the outline of the chiasm from a website online. I guess the chiasm here was a little obvious, seeing as the Psalm is bracketed with the phrase on the majesty of God – But I’m going to take the credit this time, k?

It’s been a year since I’ve been in the Bahamas. Last July, a group of us from school went for three weeks to minister and run a kid’s camp. It was exhausting! All day we were planning games, adventures, swimming, and playing. I just remember getting to the end of the day and being ready to relax. A few of us, after the kids went to their tents, would go up onto the roof of the shack we called a kitchen, and we would stare at the stars.

The stars there were phenomenal – not that they were different stars than what everyone else sees. But being on a deserted island with no electricity and being around islands that also have no electricity meant that at night there was pure, untainted darkness. On average we would see roughly ten shooting stars a night! We could see the Milky Way stretching across the sky! God seemed so BIG in comparison to it all! And I remember feeling so small.

Sometimes when we look at how big the world is, we can feel insignificant and think, “God, who am I that you are mindful of me?” We see God’s majesty, and then we feel like we make no difference in the rifts of eternity. This Psalm about God’s majesty hinges on the idea of God being mindful of man. It is a testimony of how truly great God is! God, being all that He is, loved and made people as small and seemingly insignificant as us, but yet He has made us just a little lower than that of the Cherubs and Angels! It almost seems like an oxymoron wrapped in an enigma.

So I guess if I have a point to make it’s that sometimes we are significant in our insignificance. So for my oxymoron statement to make sense, I will say we are “insignificantly significant.”

Being an intern, I get the idea that sometimes what I do isn’t making a lasting impact. Some days it seems like all I do is move the most mundane of materials. Sometimes I feel like I am going to leave here and it will be as though I never even came. But I remember that only God knows the end before the beginning, and that He knows the intricate workings that lie under every situation.

Do you feel insignificant sometimes? Do you feel like sometimes you are working without recognition? We need to remember our place in relationship to God’s. We need to remember whose majesty rules sovereign over every situation. We know that when we are weak we truly are strong – Paul said that. But do we know that even when we feel insignificant – when we feel like everything we are doing is meaningless – that that is when we might be doing what is most significant for the Kingdom?

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