Majesty
June 23, 2009
“Worship His Majesty!” What a grand old song. How often I think of those words when I see a spectacular sunset, a rainbow or streams of sunlight reaching through clouds.
Majesty. The word vibrates with high theater and magnificence, a rarified glimpse of royalty, the powerful and the Divine.
Majesty. Our hearts catch with astonishment and awe when we become aware of that someone or something that breaks into the ordinariness of our experience.
Majesty. A moment of worship, brief entry into the presence of greatness outside of our reality and then we close back in on ourselves, lower our sights and trudge merrily about our daily existence.
Majesty. We are humbled, unworthy to offer feeble and distance respect or honor.
I collect old globes. Remember the tilted plastic worlds from the school-room? The mass-produced educational ones are simple things; spheres with tiny raised mountains and colorful continents, covered with a net of fine lines.
One of my globes was inadvertently left near an open window during the annual “Yellow Pollen” season this year. I live with many large pine trees and the thick, sticky pollen covered everything, including my faded globe this spring. Mere dusting couldn’t remove all the resinous stuff, so I picked up the globe and carried into the kitchen where I gently wiped down oceans and islands and cities with a damp sponge.
While I cleaned I explored the earth in my hands. I located the Chesapeake Bay, contemplated its size and then spun the world to see where I would be if I tunneled straight through. I compared the places I have lived with other places with the same longitude and latitude. Small world in some ways, but keeping it in perspective, my daughter lives in the Midwest and it really is a long way away, not as far away as Venezuela, but too far.
In my traveling, I began to wonder how many billions of people were at that very moment breathing in those very places represented by this clever ball. People walking, working, laughing, crying, loving, healing. How awesome is this whole concept of gravity and seasons and axis and physics? I can not completely wrap my mind around it sometimes. And yet the Master Plan works. Steadfast day in, day out, through the millenniums and in spite of whatever mistakes we make.
And just when we can not remove our own sticky layers of pollen and grunge and sin, the Globe-meister Himself carefully and lovingly rinses away all our filth and corruption.
In the majesty of His death and resurrection, Jesus precisely, decisively, infinitely entered time and space to save and cleanse us. Incredibly, He shed His blood to wash us and claim this glorious, living, spinning blue globe – chosen among all the planets and stars and rocks that swirl across the universe –for His own.
Majesty. And again – Majesty.
What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?
Psalm 8:4
