Canter Bridge

The poet who stands behind our 104th psalm contributes to a compendium that adds to YHWH’s activity in history a celebration of his work in creation. It is a beautiful oddity.

Curiously, two features of divine participation in creation interweave the psalmist’s celebration.

First, the psalmist observes divine activity not only in initial creation, but in the ongoing sustaining of YHWH’s creatures. When this note is touched, we see also creaturely collaboration. YHWH provides the needed resources, and the creatures respond by gathering if they are animals and by the labors of field and hearth if they are humans.

You cause the grass to grow for the livestock
and plants for man to cultivate,
that he may bring forth food from the earth
and wine to gladden the heart of man,
oil to make his face shine
and bread to strengthen man’s heart.
The trees of the Lord are watered abundantly,
the cedars of Lebanon that he planted.
In them the birds build their nests;
the stork has her home in the fir trees.
The high mountains are for the wild goats;
the rocks are a refuge for the rock badgers …

These all look to you,
to give them their food in due season.
When you give it to them, they gather it up;
when you open your hand, they are filled with good things.
(Psalm 104:14–15 … 27-28 ESV)

Second, it is not only the psalmist who rejoices in this patterned, sustaining collaboration. YHWH himself is gladdened by it, just as is the poet in its contemplation.

May the glory of the Lord endure forever;
may the Lord rejoice in his works,
who looks on the earth and it trembles,
who touches the mountains and they smoke!
I will sing to the Lord as long as I live;
I will sing praise to my God while I have being.
May my meditation be pleasing to him,
for I rejoice in the Lord.

Creation here is not objectified in any impersonal or mechanical way. It is a living, breathing community of YHWH’s design, populated by beings who are entirely dependent upon his provision and tasked—in the case of human beings—with turning it into amplified and extended provision for others.

The cycle of life and death is recognized, a nod given to seasons of withering scarcity. None of this blurs or bounds the psalmist’s rejoicing nor, presumably, that of the Creator.

Human exertions upon the sea’s vastness and in the challenge of soil contribute to the doxological vision.

There is synergy, collaboration, even a certain imitation of God in all of this.

Only, in the end, do ‘sinners’ and the ‘wicked’ blemish its glories. These are entrusted to YHWH’s just power.

The world as we encounter it is not, we might pause to consider, inevitable. It is not ordinary. It is the work of divine hands. It is bent towards rejoicing. It is an invitation even now to appreciative laughter, to a heart made glad in the consideration of it.

Bless the Lord, O my soul!