The Blue Marble

From space, Earth looks like a "blue marble" - 75% of it covered by water. The vast blue of the oceans laced by swirling white clouds showcasing the beauty and symmetry of God’s Creation.

Psalm 104 revels in Earth-maker's workmanship – sky, clouds and rain, rivers and wet-lands, wild-life and forests - and now (in my final post on this ancient hymn) the wide blue oceans.

The Hebrews were not a sea-going people, so biblical oceans usually roar wild and restless. But in this song, the ocean is spacious and hospitable,“teeming with creatures beyond number, living things, both large and small” – from tiny microbes and plankton to dolphins and manta rays, from corals and conchs to octopus and sperm whales. Yet despite the fullness of the sea, it is not crowded; there is plenty of room for ship traffic and for whales to cavort, calve, graze and migrate.

Rain Forest

Forests are the lungs of planet earth.

They consume our CO2 and exhale oxygen.

They filter our pollution and purify the air; they re-cycle back to the atmosphere vast amounts of water through transpiration and thus help to regulate the climate patterns for the world.


Deforestation is like planetary lung cancer; it takes our breath away. We simply can’t survive without the forests; they breathe for us. We didn’t plant them but they sustain us. Reckless logging and large-scale burning for agriculture destroys a crucial balance of soil, water and air. And we all pay the price of that wanton short-sightedness.

Rain, Rain, Rain

The annual migration of Serengeti wild-life is a desperate drama -- two million desperately thirsty animals traveling hundreds of miles in search of the life-giving rains. Without the rains, they die.

We all do.

Ancient Israel's Earth-maker hymn, Psalm 104, celebrates Rain as a sign of God’s generous providence. And as Jesus noted, rain does not discriminate; it falls on "the just and the unjust alike"!


He waters the mountains from his upper chambers;
the earth is satisfied by the fruit of his work.
Psalm 104:13

Rain photo from 'The Water Cooler' blog
http://www.centralbasin.org/blog/category/drought/

Cool Mountain Streams

Ten of Asia’s largest rivers begin in the Himalayan glacial fields. It is the largest supply of frozen water on the planet after the two polar regions - sometimes called "the third pole". The ice-melt from these vast reservoirs helps feed over 2 billion people - a third of the earth. Psalm 104 celebrates God's power and love as demonstrated in fresh-water mountain streams.


He makes springs pour water into the ravines;
it flows between the mountains.
They give water to all the beasts of the field;
the wild donkeys quench their thirst.
The birds of the air nest by the waters;
they sing among the branches.
Psalm 104:10-12

Photo courtesy of Pauline Watson, Lethbridge Alberta

Proportionately rivers and streams are a miniscule drop in the global water bucket. Over 97% of the world’s water is ocean and most of the rest lies frozen in snow-pack or glaciers or stored under-ground in aquifers. But there’s still a lot left and a small portion of that – about 13,000 cubic kilometers – flows down the Amazon, Nile, Congo and Mississippi, the Danube and Rhine, the Yangtze and Yellow, the St Lawrence, Volga, Ganges and Brahmaputra, MacKenzie, Murray and Mekong, the Rio Grande and the thousands of tributaries that feed them and hundreds of other rivers like them, draining the highlands to irrigate the thirsty plains below.

Vast ecosystems depend on these rivers. Grasses, flowers, shrubs and trees grow in the water or along the shore; insects swarm above them; fish ply the currents, graze the stony river-bed, and procreate in quiet places while other fish come in from the ocean to spawn in ponds upstream; birds feed on the grasses or fish or insects; snakes and frogs, turtles and alligators and mammals large and small quench their thirst or satisfy their hunger from the river’s bounty. All these inter-act in a dynamic balance of Nature. All of them call the river ‘home’.

Humans depend on rivers for food, drinking water and sanitation - why so many cities grow up along rivers. Rivers serve industry, commerce, travel and recreation. And the aesthetic beauty of rivers, whether the thundering majesty of Niagara or the peaceful quiet of a woodland stream - rivers are one of God’s wonder-filled gifts for nourishing the human soul!

But the Tibetan glaciers are shrinking – rapidly – and I wonder . . . what is it all going to look like a hundred years downstream from here? And I wonder how to pray for those who depend on these waters. Any thoughts?

Psalm 104 – Part Three

Roaring God

I've just spent a wonderful holiday week-end enjoying one of God's geological masterpieces - Ontario's Muskoka.

Let this serve as prelude to my continuing comments (see last Friday's post) on Psalm 104.

Enjoy!





The first glimpse of Earth-maker in Psalm 104 is a Home-builder, radiating sunlight. Then, a tender mother swaddling her new creation with a blanket of Ocean.
Then dramatically . . . a Commander snapping fingers, ordering Ocean to retreat allowing Land to rise.

Continents lift like blue whales breaching, rising out of the ocean depths. Sea-water falls away; streams flow down mountains – as water always does, seeking out the lowest places on the planet.

Photo credit: "Irish Cliffs of Moher" Pauline Watson, Lethbridge, Alberta



This psalm was ancient Israel’s hymn celebrating Creation (see sidebar text) – and there’s nothing tame about its vision. God roars a rebuke and Nature obeys in a powerful tectonic drama. These are not impersonal geological mechanisms, but Nature responding to its creator’s command, like an orchestra following the conductor’s baton.

Geology is a fascinating record of this process of earth-formation – the interaction of rock, heat, water and time. The Hebrew vision captures the energy and drama of these processes, but it also identifies the maker as an Artist with life-creating, life-protecting purpose and determination.

Notice how God uses creative power for constructive life-supporting purposes. God’s rebuke is not timid, nor haughty or defensive as human rebukes often are. Rather, it is empowering and developmental. Oceans and rivers exult in God’s initiative and ingenuity; they sustain life on our planet and enable living things to flourish.

I wonder … what we can learn from watching how God works – because I'm convinced that our part in creation is not just to be admiring spectators.
I wonder … how might God’s rebuke might sound in response to the Gulf Oil spill and other ecological travesties ?
I wonder … what I can do today to help Earth-maker’s purpose to flourish?

Psalm 104 - Part Two

“What a Wonderful World!”

Centuries before Louis Armstrong painted “skies of blue and clouds of white” with his gravelly voice, artists and poets, children, lovers and scientists have stood speechless at the beauty of our elegant world.

Psalm 104 is a majestic ancient song, a melodic re-telling of the Genesis creation story. (For the text, see "Today's Water Word" sidebar.) This psalm describes God as Earth-maker, robed in sunlight, setting up tent in the blue sky with clouds-chariots and wind-couriers at the ready. Ocean depths below reflect the grandeur of Sky above. The physical world mirrors the glory of its Creator.

God wraps the planet with an ocean robe, the way a mother enfolds a newborn. Then as Earth emerges from infancy, vibrant mountain springs spill out of the ground and course down through streams and rivers, lakes and wetlands. The song describes animals of every kind nesting by these waters and bird-songs whistling from the trees. It sings about forests, grain-fields and vineyards nourished and nourishing because of the rains that fall from the sky.

Psalm 104 celebrates the beauty and fruitfulness of the earth, and attributes it all to God. It prays that this glory will endure for all time and that God will find as much pleasure and joy in it as we do –

The glory of GOD—let it last forever!
Let GOD enjoy his creation!
(v.31 The Message)

Wonder . . . Reflect for a moment on the stunning visual beauty of our world and the dynamic power of nature – either around you right now or depicted in this song.
Pause and be restful; sense the joy throbbing in creation – and an ache behind the joy - and thank God for the immense privilege of being part of it.

Psalm 104 – Part One