Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray With Me”.
Psalm 8 asks God,
What are humans that you notice them,
mortals that you care for them? (v 4).
A good question. What are humans? Just another animal, or are we different?
Anthropologists used to define us as animals with language. But dolphins and bonobo apes have language too. We used to be the animal that used tools, but now we know that crows, sea otters, orangutans, and elephants use tools too. We used to be the animal with culture, but Jane Goodall observed chimpanzees learning and passing knowledge to others.
So what does make us different?
Not body size. Ostriches, crocodiles, and elephants are bigger than us. We have better science than the other animals, but dark matter and quantum entanglement expose the limits of our understanding. Our brains do more complex thinking and long term planning than our animal friends, but that hasn’t stopped us from waging war and destroying the earth.
Listen to the psalmist’s view of humans. He says,
You made them a little lower than God,
you crowned them with glory and honor,
you made them stewards of the earth (v 5-6).
We are unique because God created us in his image, asking us to care for the world and the animals, and for each other.
It’s not being at the top of the food chain that makes us special. It’s that we’re on assignment to care for the food chain and the earth.
Let’s pray.
O God, how majestic is your name in all the earth (v 1).
You made the universe, with trillions of stars.
And in the universe you hid a small sunny star that heats a wee green planet where creatures made of dust live out their lives.
Amazingly, you call yourself creator and father to these dusty creatures, shepherding our lives, teaching us to care for the world you gave us.
We do not understand life, but we live it in the vastness of the universe, and in the seasons of our little planet, and on sabbath days of rest we take to honor you.
O God, how majestic is your name in all the earth.
Amen
I’m Daniel, on the channel “Pray with Me”.
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