Ben Fourie

“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands … The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart. Psalm 19:1,8 (NIV)

I was in my teens when I read the Afrikaans caption to this psalm and it opened a new world to my very immature understanding of God. The CEV Bible gives the psalm the following caption: “The wonders of God and the goodness of the Law.” I have been a child of the big outdoors, someone who enjoyed roaming alone in the koppies and bushes along the Orange River where I grew up. In summer we slept outside and the multitude of stars always fascinated me. When reading this psalm I started to understand something of the overall nature of God.

We live in a world where more and more amazing things about the world and cosmos are being discovered almost daily by scientist of a variety of disciplines. Some of the most stunning is Einstein’s theory of relativity, space telescopes that peer deeper and deeper into the universe with unbelievable results, the research into the building blocks of everything through nuclear research and the almost spooky world of quantum physics.

Many people were unfortunately led away from their belief in God by all this knowledge. For others, it is a new dawning of understanding God. The difference between these two groups can be found in the caption to the psalm. God does reveal himself in the tiniest part of an atom and also in the billions of stars in our constellation and the billions of constellations in the universe. I see him in the ant that crawls on my arm and the mighty wind that destroy the trees.

To understand the God of all these things, I also need to understand the “goodness of his Law.” In verse 8 we read: “The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart.The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes." We might be able to see something of Him in nature but will never be able to unlock his true nature if it was not for his Word.

Prayer: We thank you, the Creator of heaven and earth, that you gave us the universe as a pointer towards your greatness but we also thank you for the Bible to help us understand who you really are. Amen