Day 153, or June 2nd.
Magnify the Lord.
Our thoughts today are taken from Psalm 8, verse 1.
Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth.
And now the big picture surrounding this verse.
Throughout history, the Psalms have been used to help people of all nations get in tune
with God.
Even a song can sum up our innermost thought, and the Psalms do this over and over again.
In the eighth Psalm, the opening refrain is repeated at the very end.
David begins by challenging us to consider how majestic God's name is, and then he concludes
with the same thought.
How majestic is your name.
And now our action step for today.
Is your image of God large enough?
When we think of magnifying something in the 21st century, we think of making it larger
than it actually is.
In ancient times, however, when the Bible talks about magnifying God, it means to raise
him up in our mind to a position closer to reality.
We cannot think of God as bigger than he really is, but we certainly can have a falsely small
image of him.
When we get but a glimpse of God, we never see him for what he is because we couldn't
cope with that.
But that doesn't give us permission to reduce him in size, power, or authority.
Remember, when Moses asked to see God, he was protected by God's hand, as he took refuge
in a rock crevice as God's glory passed by.
God is so much bigger in every way than we can ever imagine, even when we magnify him
in our minds.
A modern hymn, which begins with David's words from Psalm 8, hits this point home beautifully,
and is worth recalling many times today.