Partners in Mission

PSALM 8:3-6
“When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor. You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet…”

As a kid I would go for walks on our farmland. I went in the dead of winter, and I would go at night. It made me feel adventurous when there was not a lot of adventure to be had. The thing I will always remember about those walks was the stars.  I will never forget those stars. Staring up at the night sky you see the enormity of God’s creation and you become glaringly aware of your own insignificance.

That humanity is insignificant makes sense to me. Most people in the world live and then die, and do so in relative obscurity. Statements like, “We are a cosmic accident.” Or “We are like ants on a tiny blue dot, floating in the hostile vacuum of space…” seem painfully plausible. The heavens are immense, the earth is immense, the amount of life on this planet is immense. History is immense. The waters are deep, the mountains fierce, the storms powerful. In the face of all this wonder, it is proper to ask, “What is mankind that you are mindful of them?” I can feel that humanity is insignificant.

It is the significance God gives to humanity that doesn’t make sense. As mankind looks up, the crazy thing that the psalmist reckons with is that God looks down! The message of Scripture, from cover to cover, is that God cares about humanity. He cares for us like a husband cares for his wife, like a passionate father cares for his kids. So it is with amazement that the psalmist, and God’s people through the centuries, have looked to the heavens with astonished gratitude, praying, “You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor. You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet.”
What makes even less sense than the significance given to us at creation, is the message of the gospel. We who are so insignificant have the audacity to place ourselves against our Creator. Yet God’s Word says he so loved us that he sent his Son to reconcile us to him. God calls us out of our sin and into right relationship with him. By faith, as the psalmist looks up, he knows God is looking down, with undeserved favor.

Yet God, both in creation and through the gospel, not only gave humanity that special relationship with himself, but he calls us to labor with him. We don’t often consider the enormity of that gift. God does not simply look down upon us, he calls us into real relationship with him in life and labor, right now. God creates, but he does so through the mundane lives and work of the insignificant. He calls you through the daily work of your life to join him in cultivating and tending and caring for his creation. In the same way Christ builds his Church. He makes disciples and he calls us—insignificant ones—to join him in cultivating and sowing and tending that new life. That is the great awe of our Scripture passage. That is the great awe of our mission as the Church. Our mundane lives take on eternal, cosmic significance. Through the Word we know that the lives of our neighbors, our friends and our families take on eternal and cosmic significance. God works among them, and he calls us to join him in his work. He calls us into a real relationship, joining him in life and labor.

We don’t often consider the enormity of that gift.

“When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?”

Rev. Clint Knutson is Professor of Systematic Theology at Lutheran Brethren Seminary and is in the process of completing his PhD through Concordia Seminary–St. Louis.