O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise because of your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger.
When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet: all flocks and herds, and the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas.O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
One of the biggest paradigm shifts I ever made as a new believer was to go from being so all-important in my own mind, to seeing myself as so insignificant when compared to God.
As a non-believer it was all about me; what I had accomplished, and what still greater things I could do if I just decided to. I was obsessed with the acquisition of the material trappings that would validate my high opinion of myself. My pride puffed me up like a blowfish, trying to make me look so much bigger than I really was.
It took a huge fall for the Lord to get me to see myself as I really am, an ant standing before the world’s ultimate giant; helpless and hopeless, worthless and useless. I remembered the words of the 12 spies that Moses sent ahead into the Promised Land. When describing the indigenous people they lamented, “We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes and we looked the same to them.”(Numbers 13:33 Believe me, when I stood before the Throne of God for the first time, I could relate. The more you know about God, the bigger He gets and the smaller you become.
Then I read Psalm 8 and realized that King David had the same problem. That fearless warrior, whom God described as “a man after my own heart” also experienced the insignificance of man in the presence of his Creator.
But then the Lord reminded him as he reminds us that though we’ve been made a little lower than the angels, we’ve been placed in charge of His creation and crowned with glory and honor.
There’s a sense in which this Psalm was really written with The Son of Man, the Messiah, in view rather than all sons of mankind. You can translate the phrase “a little lower” as “for a little while lower” and as He said to His disciples, “All authority in Heaven and on Earth has been given to me.”
The writer of Hebrews seems to agree in Chapter 2:5-9, his commentary on Psalm 8. But then he goes on to remind us that the suffering of the Son of Man brought glory and honor to all the sons of mankind who believe, for He is not ashamed to call us his brothers. And as He has been elevated above the angels, so are you and I. For God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus (Ephe 2:6-7).
You and I are God’s workmanship, literally His work of art, the highest and finest example of His creative capability, co-heirs with His Son Who has been given the ends of the Earth as His possession, co-regents with Him to Whom all authority in Heaven and on Earth has been granted.
So I’ve come full circle. It is all about me. Only now I see that I’m the undeserving recipient of a love I have no right to expect and blessings I have no ability to measure. This love has elevated me to the highest heights of creation. How does the song go? “You put me high upon a pedestal, so high that I could almost see eternity.” The same is true of you.
No longer do I take pride in what the power of my mind and the strength of my arm have accomplished. Now I am humbled to see what the Creator of the Universe has done for me. And like King David I wonder, “What is man that you are mindful of him?” And like him I sing my praise saying, “O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”