(from Psalm 19a)
I love the poetic devices of personification, metaphor and irony in this Psalm. The heavens declare the obvious without words. “We are designed and created by Someone Wonderful!” The message of creation’s Creator shouts day after day, throughout all the earth, by the wonders of what He has made.
The Psalm goes on to say that in the heavens, God “has set a tent for the sun, who goes forth like a bridegroom from his chamber. What a joyous image! He runs his course, his circuit across the sky, from one end to the other. There is no part of the world beneath him that is not touched by his heat.
After the first half of the Psalm, I added a variation of what I believe was originally an ancient Greek personification of the sun “who walks with fire between his shoulders, transforming the kingdom of night into day.” For the purposes of my song, I compared that fragment of the sun’s transforming power to the Power of Christ to transform
the darkness of this world at the second coming. “So shall the Son of Man be coming in His glory when He touches the earth with His feet, again.
There are those who say they cannot believe in God because they are scientifically minded. They say that whatever cannot be perceived by the senses is nonsense. They say there is no evidence for a life after death, and that the universe itself will eventually die a heat death.
But, I once heard Vishal Mangalwadi pose a question that went something like this: “What is the ultimate reality, life or death? If death is the ultimate reality, then there is nothing after this life. But if this is true, how can we account for life arising out of what is dead, to begin with? On the other hand, if eternal life is the ultimate reality, there must also be an eternal Being who must always be alive. Then, He can cause even that which has died to return to its ultimate state of life once again.”
Do you see the problem? Those who deny the resurrection have canceled out the possibility of their own existence, because they say that this life must have come from dead matter. It’s like saying, in the beginning there was death, then there was life for a while ( all by itself), then there was death again. They hold to this absurdity in the hope that they will not be held accountable for their lives, and can live as they please.
But those of us who say life comes from a Creator have a more logical position. We can account for life, personhood and purpose. We can see evidence of design and order in virtually every discipline of science. We have a basis for morality and accountability to a higher moral authority. It’s like saying, in the beginning there was life, then there was death (because of sin), then there was life again. We have a basis for faith in logic, creation and history, as well as the capacity to experience God by the Holy Spirit Who dwells within us.
Some time later, I put the second half of Psalm 19 to use in another song meditating on the Law of God. It hasn’t been recorded yet, but some times I sing Psalm 19b after this one, 19a, because the Holy Spirit originally intended them to be together.