This psalm follows Genesis 1 loosely. Light, sky, sea, land, sun and moon, and animals are all present, though never in the same tidy order. Genesis 1 narrates a sequence of past events, each day closing before the next begins. This psalm celebrates how creation works right now.
1"you are very great! You are clothed with splendor and majesty, 2covering yourself with light as with a garment." God wears light and is no part of it. He rides the clouds and commands the elements, and even the sun obeys. The sun keeps its appointed time for setting. What ancient religion attributed to the sun belongs, the psalm insists, to the one who appointed the sun its post.
God set the earth on its foundations and set the sea a boundary it may not pass. Many ancient peoples told of a god subduing the chaotic sea before the world could stand. Here the sea simply obeys a boundary, because Yahweh has no rival to defeat.
The psalm then turns from creation's origin to its upkeep, verse after verse of provision. 10"You make springs gush forth in the valleys," and 11"the wild donkeys quench their thirst." There are nests for birds in the cedars, refuge for rock badgers, grass for cattle, and bread for humans. Every creature waits on God in the same way, and none can sustain its own existence for a single day.
24"O LORD, how manifold are your works! In wisdom have you made them all." And then a startling line. 26"Leviathan, which you formed to play in it." Leviathan elsewhere in Scripture is the emblem of untamable chaos. Here it is God's plaything, formed to sport in an ocean whose boundaries God set. What terrified an ancient world, this psalm treats as a small delight inside an ordered creation.
Then the theological center, the rhythm every living thing lives inside. 27"These all look to you, to give them their food in due season." 29"when you take away their breath, they die." And the answer: when he sends forth his Spirit, they are created, and he renews the face of the ground. Life and death, moment by moment, are in the same hand. Each creature's next breath depends on this Spirit being sent again, an ongoing creation as necessary as the first.
The psalm ends in resolve. 33"I will sing to the LORD as long as I live." Praise is offered as the only response proportionate to a world this thoroughly upheld, and the line that opened the psalm closes it, "Bless the LORD, O my soul!" A psalm that began marveling at the heavens ends where every creature ends, receiving one more breath and answering with thanks. The wonder is in the sky, and it is also in the lungs.
Take a slow breath this morning and receive it as a gift from the hand that opens to fill you with good things.
Prayer
Father, you clothe yourself with light, and still you notice the wild donkey's thirst and the lion cub's hunger, providing for all creatures as you provide for us. When you send forth your Spirit we are made alive again. Let our meditation be pleasing to you, and let our lives keep singing praise to the God who upholds every breath. In Jesus' name, amen.