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When I stare into the heavens above...

So here is part 3 of my series of posts based on last Sunday's Harvest Celebration of Creation and Creativity, inspired by Genesis 1. The main part of this blog, a dramatised paraphrase of Psalm 8, I have posted a number of times before in different forms... and I was going to skip it, until on Tuesday a colleague used Psalm 8 and the Casting Crowns below as part of the devotions at a training day I was at. On Sunday we also used a version of the same song, but sung by the wonderful Melanie Johnston. Great minds think alike... or something like that...

And God said, "Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water." So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. And it was so. God called the expanse "sky." And there was evening, and there was morning--the second day.
Genesis 1: 6-8


Dramatised Reading: Psalm 8
BOTH:          O LORD , our God, your name is honoured in all that you have made!
Voice 1:         Beyond the boundless reaches of space
Voice 2:         Higher than the heavens where the angels offer you their symphony of worship;
Voice 1:         While here on earth even nursing infants gurgle in adoration
Voice 2:         Toddlers shout songs of praise
Voice 1:         Silencing the cynical sneering of the enemy
Voice 2:         Drowning out the godless chatter of the age.
Voice 1:         When I stare into the heavens above,
                        I see your fingerprints all over the sky…
Voice 2:         I see jewellery of the finest of workmanship
                        with the moon mounted in an almost infinite setting of stars…
Voice 1:         And I feel so small…
Voice 2:         I sense the expanse between heaven and earth,
Voice 1:         Creator and creature…
Voice 2:         And I wonder why you bother with me?
Voice 1:         Why you would look once, never mind twice, in my direction?
Voice 2:         Yet I am always on your mind
Voice 1:         You care for me night and day…
Voice 2:         You have made me little less than a god…
Voice 1:         The crown of all creation,
Voice 2:         A jewel that brings joy to your heart.
Voice 1:         You charged me with looking after your handiwork
Voice 2:         You laid everything at my feet:
Voice 1:         All creatures great and small;
Voice 2:         domesticated and wild
Voice 1:         The flocking birds, and shoaling fish
Voice 2:         and the whales whose songs of praise circle the seven seas.
BOTH:          O LORD , our God, your name is honoured in all that you have made! 






ps. for all fact checkers, forgive the wrong attribution at the end of this video, the Psalm cited is It's actually Psalm 143:5, not 145: 4

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