Two things awe me most, the starry sky above me and the moral law within me.
- Immanuel Kant
Psalms in the Night…
With so many wonderful Biblical promises and powerful examples of God's interaction with mankind, see Psalms of Delight, Psalms in the Night are a way of exploring and sharing some of the difficult and challenging thoughts, feelings and experiences God's people encounter while endeavoring to fully enjoy His presence and power, protection and provision. In ever more genuine and meaningful ways. For themselves and their children, family and friends.
Psalms in the Night are written in concert with Psalms of Delight. Both series contain Modern Psalms meant to comfort and inspire those seeking the Omni-God revealed in Scripture.
Approaching God Summary
Creation shouts the Glory of God, yet for most of us His presence seems veiled at best. This first Psalm in the Night lays the foundation of addressing our dilemma through acknowledging both His greatness and our great need for more of Him. Longing for God will be explored through examining the most difficult themes facing mankind. These include the apparent silence of God and unanswered prayer, the challenges of sin and Satan, as well threats to the Church and humanity itself. All contributing to the present and thickening spiritual darkness engulfing the Earth. Yet our God "is an ever present help in times of trouble." Our Creator and Savior is the source of infinite power and energy, heat and light. Including that produced by perhaps 200 billion trillion suns . Millions exploding in glorious Supernovas as you read these words!
Approaching God
Modern Psalm in the Night 1
Hello God. I trust all is well with You today though I realize words like "well" and "You" and "today" are relative terms for Omnity. You alone possess eternal Self Existence, Omniscience, Omnipotence, Omnipresence and Immutability.
You alone created all that is seen from things unseen, some of which mankind is finally discovering. Yet even these You created from Your Glory by the word of Your power and the precision of Your plans. And what unfathomable plans creation suggests You have!
Thank You for letting ours be the first generation to begin to glimpse the extent of Your majesty, power and design. It's truly unbelievable. We now know It would take a million Earths to fill our Sun which is only a modest star. We've learned there are at least two hundred billion suns in the our Milky Way Galaxy and two hundred billion galaxies in the known Universe! All stretched across a canopy of perhaps 100 billion light years having originated from a singularity one million trillionth the size of a proton. In this the first of perhaps three heavens! Only now are we beginning to get the picture of how right the great Psalmist David was to exclaim:
- "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge.They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them.Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world." Psalm 19:1-4
Who can begin to fathom the history of eternity, much less Your Glory? Before I try let me confess again that I and the entire human race, perhaps a hundred billion past, present and future are but 'dust in the balance' before any aspect of Your Omnity or even Your creation of space-time, matter or energy. We are as a mist, here in the morning and burnt off by mid morning. Thinking feeling often sinful reeds to whom a little water added or withheld can mean life or death. We are soulish spirits in bloody meatcycles on skeletal sticks, 'fearfully and wonderfully made' yet with little or no concern over the demands of our Maker to be obedient, productive and thankful.
In fact my generation, though we are first to begin to appreciate the glory and intelligent design of everything from the cosmos to our own bodies, more often than not deny or even mock Your very existence. And this, even though for the most part we are born between feces and urine and for all our pomp will die as dogs.
Yet even with such a great gulf and difference between us in both nature and character You continue to offer us the opportunity to become beloved stardust, 'heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.' Thankfully Scripture declares:
- “This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again.” John 3:16-17 The Message
“This is the crisis we’re in: God-light streamed into the world, but men and women everywhere ran for the darkness. They went for the darkness because they were not really interested in pleasing God. Everyone who makes a practice of doing evil, addicted to denial and illusion, hates God-light and won’t come near it, fearing a painful exposure. But anyone working and living in truth and reality welcomes God-light so the work can be seen for the God-work it is.” John 3:19-21 The Message
Issues with God can be touchy subjects. Consciously or not we all have them. Our unanswered questions, sorrows and complaints may be clearly on our minds and evident in our behavior, or buried in the recesses our soul. They shape our relationships and worldview, influencing the course of all our lives. Few have the courage to open such a can of worms and examine deep and universal challenges to faith. Billions feel trying to understand or relate to Omnity's already such an impossible assignment, any additional effort is a waist.
Billions of others appear to justify You in word and song, all the while living lifestyles suggesting their hearts are actually far from God. Still others protest You transcend human experience, rendering the subject of disappointment with God moot.
Greatest Gift
Great King David once said he would not offer the Lord that which cost him nothing. The reverse is far more true. The Gift You offer mankind cost You everything. The Incarnation alone is beyond imagining. Who can grasp what God the Son shedding just Omnipresence entailed? Withdrawing His presence from reigning throughout the Three Heavens He created to become a sperm inserted into the womb of a teenage girl in Nazareth...
Add to this the King of the Multiverse's humble birth and life. His rejection, torture and crucifixion by His own. And what of the mysteries and suffering of the Atonement, where we are told, "He that knew no sin became sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in Christ."
From God the Son creating and reigning in Heaven to Sin! From the glorious Son of God to the Son of Man:
- "...despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. Isaiah 53:3-5
Truly "we've never even heard of a God like You." Time would fail to list Omnity's attributes such as Your love, mercy and faithfulness. And such great forgiveness! Even given Your great faithfulness from before the foundations of the Earth and our constant deceit and treacheries You yet bid us to come and reason together. And come we must. For while no words due Your Glory justice, no human tongue can tell half the extent of our need. To even begin to do so would require many prayers working through our issues with God. Much grief over sin and suffering. Many cries of sorrow and pain.
As You knew before there was time, in light what appears to us Divine silence and distance, much of the modern world not only doubts Your goodness but very existence. Fed a constant diet of entitlement and Me-ism, our Adversary and architect of heaven’s rebellion has little difficulty in tempting and deceiving not only the secular world but modern Christianity.
In light of our precarious temporal and eternal situation, please pardon what may be the hight of presumption when I ask Omnity difficult questions. My hope is to work out my and our “salvation with fear and trembling” by endeavoring to answer these serious spoken and unspoken objections and accusations against the reasonableness of Biblical faith.
Before setting out on this journey, please except my repentive and broken daily prayers for forgiveness and offer of praise belonging to You alone. I would also ask three more things. First, the permission to speak freely to such a Glorious Person as Yourself. Second, that You would help me be still and know You are God. Guide this sinner's waiting on and wrestling with You. Third, that this may somehow be of help to a generational I fear is as spiritually helpless as an newborn kicking around in it's own blood.
As first King David and then our Lord and Savior taught us to pray, "Have mercy on me a sinner."
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