What is man that you should keep him in mind,
Psalm 8:4
mortal man that you care for him?
Today, morning prayer included Psalm 8 as the third psalm to be prayed. This is a psalm struck me for three reasons. It recognizes God’s incomprehensible greatness, His awesome love for us, and mankind’s dignity and honor to be held and cared for by God.
God’s Greatness
For thousands of years, scientists have been pondering and theorizing about God’s greatness. Even St. Robert Bellarmine was in on the discussion with Galileo about the significance of a heliocentric perspective on the Catholic faith.
The Psalmist declares, “When I see the heavens, the work of your hands, the moon and the stars which you arranged…”
Have you ever paused on a clear night to look up? Imagine, pre-electricity, when they brightest stars that you and I have ever seen would have been visible each and every night.
It is awe-inspiring to contemplate that God had all of this in mind. Take this beautiful image from the Hubble telescope of Spiral Galaxy NGC 1376. This is a beautiful photograph! God still constantly holds the stars in existence, and what for? So we can admire them through a telescope from far away? So that each gravitational pull is perfectly in balance? For us to have the atmosphere and living conditions that sustain us?
It is amazing that, for as much as we know, there is infinite more that we will never know. But God knows. That is God’s Greatness.
God’s Love for Mankind
Now the psalm continues from noting the incredible wonder of God to saying, “what is man that you should keep him in mind, mortal man that you should care for him?”
In other words, “God, you had the power to accomplish any feat! Why did you make us?!”
Love.
God had each of us in mind.
Your eyes saw me unformed; in your book all are written down; my days were shaped, before one came to be.
Psalm 139:16
Reflection on God’s Providence
With God’s Providence – or as I think of it, God’s essence to provide, His provide-essence – he cares for and loves us deeply in every moment, even the extremely difficult ones.
I had a hard time understanding God’s Providence until I read the story of Fr. Walter Ciszek in He Leadeth Me. This is an incredible story of a priest who was torn from everything and had to endure the worst in a Soviet Gulag. If anyone should doubt providence, it should have been him, yet the terrible environment revealed a clear plan. Fr. Walter tells his story and in each chapter explains how God provided for him.
Worth of Every Moment
No man, no matter what his situation, is ever without value, is ever useless in God’s eyes. No situation is ever without its worth and purpose in God’s providence.
He Leadeth Me, Pg. 47
This understanding of Providence allowed Fr. Walter to not only keep his faith, but to flourish through difficult moments. It is knowing that even when we do not see or understand, our every situation is a part of a greater and better balance than we could currently comprehend. We only have to strive to accept the current situation we are in, and try to act as Christ would in that moment. I love how relevant Fr. Walter’s words that he wrote in 1973 are to 2020. He continues:
It is a very human temptation to feel frustrated by circumstances, to feel overwhelmed and helpless in the face of the established order – whether that order is an NKVD prison, or the whole Soviet system, or “the status quo”, or “city hall”, or “the rat race”, or the “establishment,” or social pressures, or the cultural environment, or the whole, oppressive rotten world! Under the worst imaginable circumstances, a man remains a man with free will, and God stands ready to assist him with his grace. Indeed, more than that, God expects him to act in these circumstances, this situation, as he would have him act. For these situations, too, these people and places and things, are God’s will for him how.
He Leadeth Me, Pg. 47-48
He may not be able to change the “system,” any more than I could change the conditions in that prison, but he is not for that reason excused from acting at all. Many men feel frustrated, or disappointed, or even defeated, when they find themselves face to face with a situation or an evil they cannot do much about. Poverty, addiction, alcoholism, social injustice, racial discrimination, hatred and bitterness, war, corruption, and the oppressive bureaucracy of every institution – all can serve as a source of bitter frustration and a feeling sometimes of utter hopelessness. But God does not expect a man single-handedly to change the world or overthrow all evil or cure all ills. He does expect him, though, to act as he would have him act in these circumstances ordained by his will and his providence. Nor will God’s grace be lacking to help him act.
Grace and Free Will
Recently, there are many reasons to feel frustration or unease. Situations that Fr. Walter lists seem more relevant today than ever. In fact, all of the issues mentioned still exist. However, the permanence of issues does not permit inaction towards a solution. With eyes on the eternal, we can have peace of mind knowing that, in his greatness, God will provide. Just pause, listen, and act where called with the grace and free will he has given you.
God want’s the best for us, eternally. Our time on Earth is important, but our time afterwards is infinitely more important. God’s plan is for you to get there with him. Despite all of the chaos of our current environment we need to just act as God would want us to act within each moment, which is to love him and love others. We can only be responsible for our own actions each day, and we hope that those actions will bring good into the world around us.
God’s Providence is Love
Whether friends or family, when you love someone, you provide for them.
God made you out of Love, for love in this current moment. If we can accept and overflow that love to others, we have the opportunity to live in the midst of the Trinity in Heaven forever.
That is significant.
Who is man, that we should have that opportunity?
Dignity of Mankind
Yet you have made him little less than a god;
Psalm 8:5-6
with glory and honor you crowned him,
gave him power over the works of your hand,
put all things under his feet.
We have been given such an incredible and powerful ability: to freely act in a way that changes the course of time, to use that free will to do God’s works. Why did God trust us with so much power?
If you want something done the right way you do it yourself, right? And what if you are infinitely perfect? God, infinitely perfect, decided to entrust us with free will, invite us into His plan, and share his life. I can barely trust a barber with my hair because I don’t like the way it comes out, so I cut it myself. Yet, here is God entrusting all of salvation history to mankind! It is as if Michael Angelo, after being commissioned to paint the Sistine Chapel, handing over the brush to a little kid and his watercolors and finger paints.
Dignity of Trust
Trust is an honor. In allowing mankind to freely choose to love or not love, God is honoring us. Once again Fr. Walter say’s it better:
We tend to concentrate on ourselves, we tend to think of what we can or cannot do, and we forget about God and his will and his providence. Yet, God never forgets each individual’s significance, his dignity and worth, and the role each has been asked to play in the workings of his providence. To him, each individual is equally important at all times. He cares. But he also expects each man to accept, as from his hands, the daily situations he sends him and to act as he would have him act and gives him the grace to act.
He Leadeth Me, Pg. 48
God knows your worth; therefore, he honors and trusts you with responsibility. He knows you are capable of extraordinary things. He hands you the brush and expects that you will accept and accomplish his beautiful work. However, you are not expected to do it alone. God gives us the grace within each situation to do the right thing.
Participation in God’s Providence
So there you are, in the present moment. You have a brush in hand that God has trusted you with. You see his Truth, Goodness, and Beauty all around you in the stars and the sky. God has painted the background for you; that is, the people in your life, your current location, the weather, and every detail. Now, will you accept that brush and the canvas you have been given? Will you add to the masterpiece in the way only you can to share in God’s life, or sit idle wishing you had been given a better canvas?
God is infinitely perfect and great. Out of love he created you with a purpose, that love gives you dignity and value to live life fully alive and full of meaning.