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“When I consider your heavens, 

the work of your fingers, 

the moon and the stars, 

which you have set in place, 

what is the man that you are mindful of him, 

the son of man that you care for him? 

You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings 

and crowned him with glory and honor” 

Psalm 8:3- 5 ESV

The chapter is entitled, Looking Beyond Shadows, and the Bible verse above is the starting point.  I have never thought what Dr. Sproul points out to us here, listen to him:

“These {Psalm 8: 3-5} were not the sentiments of a professional astronomer or a primitive astrologer. They were the reflections of an ordinary person who was contemplating his small place in a vast universe. The psalmist had no concept of an expanding universe that contained billions of stars and innumerable galaxies. He had no thoughts of exploding novae or of spiral nebulae. He had never heard of the Big-Bang cosmology. From his vantage point in space and time, the sky appeared to be a doomed canopy whose luminaries were perhaps only a few miles high in the sky”

I can not but put together this chapter with all the meditations I have been reading concerning the Incarnation of our Lord. 


This is what we should ponder about this season… “What is man that you are so mindful of Him?”

“With the meager resources the psalmist had when ge gazed into the night sky of Palestine, he was overwhelmed by the weighty sense of contrast between the magnificence of the heavens and the reality obscurity and insignificance of his own life. By considering the start, he was forced to ask the ultimate question: ‘What is man that you are mindful of Him?'”

This is where I see the connection… Why did You, O Lord, choose to come to rescue us… me?

Maybe I am starting to understand…

“Perhaps the psalmist was able to perceive something to which we have become almost completely blind. Perhaps it was because the psalmist could see past the stars and the moon to the ONe who set them in the heavens in the first place”

Yes, O Lord, help me see beyond the shadows; through the stars and the ordinary; Help me see you!

These words I read and re-read, these words say s much about me.

“We are creatures who prefer life in the cave to the full light of the blazing sun. The glory of God is all around us. We cannot miss it. However, we not only fail to stop and smell the flowers, but we also fail to notice the glory of the flowers’ Maker.

Indeed the featured presentation in te theater of divine majesty in which we walk daily is God’s glory. The Psalmist declares that the sky and all of nature sing out God’s glory and majesty”

This is the Holy One who was indeed mindful of his creatures and came to them. The creature became creature. The Holy One came in flesh.

But we cannot see beyond shadows if we haven’t been  regenerated by the Holy Spirit. We are not able to see beyond the beauty of the world around us, we are not be able to see  beyond the stars or Christmas lights; we are not able to hear beyond Christmas carols or the beautiful sound of ocean waves crashing against huge rocks; we are not able to see His holiness, His Glory beyond shadows if we have not been born of the spirit. If our eyes have not be opened to see and our ears have not been opened to hear. We desperately need Him.

“Shadows in a cave are given to change. They dance and flicker with ever-changing shape and brightness. To contemplate the truly holy and to go beyond the surface of creaturely things, we need to get out of our self- made cave and walk in the glorious light of God’s holiness”

Walking out from shadows…

Thanks to Tim Challies for choosing this book.