Psalm 8

1 O Lord our Governor, how exalted is your Name in all the world!
2 Out of the mouths of infants and children your majesty is praised above the heavens.
3 You have set up a stronghold against your adversaries, to quell the enemy and the avenger.
4 When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars you have set in their courses,
5 What is man that you should be mindful of him? the son of man that you should seek him out?
6 You have made him but little lower than the angels; you adorn him with glory and honor;
7 You give him mastery over the works of your hands; you put all things under his feet:
8 All sheep and oxen, even the wild beasts of the field,
9 The birds of the air, the fish of the sea, and whatsoever walks in the paths of the sea.
10 O Lord our Governor, how exalted is your Name in all the world!

This year, Monday Matters is focused on wisdom conveyed in the treasures of the book of Psalms. We'll look at the psalms read in church before Monday Matters comes to your screen.

Mindfulness: God's and ours

Mindfulness is apparently all the rage, for good reason. It’s an important spiritual practice, as many religious traditions indicate. As the priest, Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715) noted: Attentiveness is the prayer of the soul. In a world marked by innumerable distractions as close as the smart phone, a mindfulness practice is increasingly difficult to practice. But it wasn’t until I thought about the psalm we heard in church yesterday that I realized that the God of scripture practices mindfulness too.

The psalmist says it plainly: What is man that you should be mindful of him? I imagine the author looking up at the star lit night, tracing the path of the moon across that vault, awestruck by that display. From our perspective, a few thousand years after the psalm was written, the biblical vision of the heavens seems small, that biblical vision imagining the sky as a kind of superdome holding back waters of chaos, the earth at the center of it all. One wonders what the psalmist would say now, as Hubble telescopes reveal an apparently unending universe, the earth shrinking in size, no longer the center but a fleck of dust. The psalmist’s question becomes all the more powerful.

It makes me wonder what we need to do to recover the meaning of the word “awesome.” We apply the word to a good meal, a great song, a fun party, a three-pointer, whatever. I suspect that a key element in our spiritual lives, in our relationship with the Holy One, is to spend time in amazed reflection on the wonder of it all. In many ways, we’ve lost that. We sometimes find ourselves boring people in church. In our own lives, we spend time as functional atheists, not recognizing that we live in the presence of God the creator. My own spiritual challenge is to recognize each day that my life unfolds in the presence of God, in relationship to God, a mindfulness that calls for both accountability on my part and gratitude for grace.

There’s yet another factor causing the psalmist to break into praise. The psalmist notes the amazing grace that the God of this vast and awesome creation is mindful of us. This psalmist, mindful of God’s mindfulness, anticipates the greatest example of God’s mindfulness of us, the mystery of the incarnation, God with us (Immanuel) in the person of Jesus. Like the mystery of the Trinity we heard about yesterday in church, I don’t know how it is possible that the God of creation took human form, indeed siding with those on the margins of human community. All of it we embrace in faith, allowing it to shape our lives, leading us to worship not only with our lips but with our lives.

I keep on the wall of my study this quote from Richard Rohr:

I do not want to belong to a religion that cannot kneel. I do not want to live in a world where there is no one to adore. It is a lonely and labored world if I am its only center.

We are meant to live our lives mindful of the miracle that the God of all creation is mindful of us, paying attention to us, meeting us with grace and love. It does not mean we understand it. I admit I find it in some respects unbelievable. At the same time, that kind of mindfulness provides a guiding principle for our spiritual journeys.

Giving thanks that God is mindful of us, how might we grow in our own mindfulness this week?

- Jay Sidebotham