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God Delights in Creation

Psalm 104 paints a beautiful picture of both the psalmist’s and God’s delight in creation:

Praise the Lord, my soul. Lord my God, You are very great; You are clothed with splendor and majesty. The Lord wraps Himself in light as with a garment; He stretches out the heavens like a tent and lays the beams of his upper chambers on their waters. He makes the clouds his chariot and rides on the wings of the wind. He makes winds his messengers, flames of fire his servants. He set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved. (Psalm 104:1–5)

The psalm goes on to name the glories of watery depths, mountains, thunder, springs, ravines, wild beasts, plants, birds, moon, and the sun. In a talk on this psalm, Dr. Richard Mouw notes that human beings aren’t mentioned until almost halfway through the thirty-five verses of this Hebrew poem.[1] Clearly there was enough creational glory to be celebrated beyond and before that of human beings. Mouw applied this humbling observation to the question of why God took so much time to create the universe. Perhaps, like the psalmist, God wanted to celebrate and delight in the goodness of all creation.

Were the psalmist to have known about astrophysics, perhaps he might have also written:

Gather together, all you elements; hydrogen, lithium, and helium. For the Lord your God speaks; fuse and be transformed. Give birth to carbon; fill the cosmos with life. For you are mine; you belong to me, says the Lord.

Science is only beginning to understand all that fills the cosmos. It may take an eternity to fully understand all that has been made. Perhaps humanity, along with God, will be delighting in the unending wisdom of creation forever.

Matter matters this much.

[1] Richard Mouw, He Shines in All That’s Fair: Culture and Common Grace (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001,) 35–36.

Take Action

If you were to write a psalm about creation, what would it look like? Have you ever imagined how God feels about that one part of creation that really captures your heart? When I wrote the psalm-like lines about creation, I was overwhelmed by the thought that God might feel this way about this part of creation. Imagining God’s delight in creation makes my delight in creation feel a lot more personal. I sensed a deep and intimate presence as I wrote those few phrases.

What if you tried to do it too?