Praying the Psalms With Hope With N.T. WrightSample

The God of Creation

One of the primary ways the Psalms express God’s goodness is through the celebration of creation. The God of the Psalms is defined by his status as creator as much as anything else.

Psalm 104 is a celebration of God as the creator. It looks back, in many ways, to Genesis 1 and 2. It's a way of saying, among many other things, that even though the world has gone wrong in several significant respects, that will not stop us from praising the God of creation.

We can look all around us to the natural world—the sun, moon, and stars; the sky, sea, and land; the trees, plants, and animals—and recognize it all as God's good creation. God is within and over the majestic world. This is who he wants to be known as. Of course, God is much greater than creation, but not in a way that rejects creation or runs from it. God is at work in the creation all around us, and God takes pleasure in it. If we don't have a vision of God in our heads that allows us to think of God taking pleasure in his world, then we need to pray these psalms and change our view of God.

Within this celebration of the created world, we also see humanity humbly going about their work. It’s almost like an anticlimax. Having seen this entire zoological and cosmological garden full of God’s marvelous works, humans are doing their thing in the middle of it. Just as nature, by being nature, attests to God’s goodness, human works are also to attest to God’s goodness. This psalm gives license not only to think in celebratory terms but also in active terms. The amazement at God’s creation leads us to ask how we can celebrate that creation in ways that afford it the honor due to everything that is God’s.

The psalmist, having relished creation as it is, eventually looks ahead. Death will come, but God is going to deal with that as well. God gives breath and life and food and drink to everything. Is God going to give up on this good creation? Is it all just going to disappear into nothingness eventually? No, of course not. God is the good creator who will give breath to renew the face of the earth.

Reflect:

What are some of the aspects or images of creation that you interact with most regularly? In what ways might you recognize these as reflections of God and ways in which God communicates? How can you continue to recognize creation as a reason for praise?