How to See God and People

"The LORD is exalted over all the nations,
His glory above the heavens.
Who is like the LORD our God,
the One who sits enthroned on high,
who stoops down to look on the heavens and the earth?

He raises the poor from the dust
and lifts the needy from the ash heap;
He seats them with princes,
with the princes of their people.
He settles the barren women in her home
as a happy mother of children.

Praise the LORD."  Psalm 113: 4-9

This is part of one of the psalms I read last week.  I want to point our two great things I found in this song.

1) God stoops down to look on the heavens and the earth.

Have you looked at images from the Hubble telescope before?  If you haven't then you should.  The images are mind boggling.  Then you learn how many light years they are across and you lose your ability to understand how big they really are.

This psalm says that God stoops down to look at the heavens and the earth.  Imagine God bending down to look at the Milky Way the same way you stoop down to look at a flower.  This poetic image draws our attention to the fact that God is amazingly enormous and powerful.  This is both a scary and comforting thought.

2) God has equal regard for all types of people.

This psalm says that God lifts the poor from the dust and the needy out of the ash heap and sets them next to princes.  Princes and beggars are equally valuable in the eyes of God.  Partly because God is so big that those we think are important are tiny to Him and because God sees the value of all He has created.

When my wife and I were in Chicago we saw so many people begging on the streets.  After awhile you begin to just walk by them without a second thought.  God doesn't do that and I shouldn't either.  Do I have equal regard for all types of people?  Do I value rich and poor, young and old, educated and uneducated, born and unborn, Christian and non-Christian, black and white?  Why am I so arrogant to think that "my kind" of people are better than others?  Why do I insult the Creator by not seeing the beauty of some of His masterpieces?

God is big, I am small.  God sees all types of people as valuable and so should I.  Jesus went from stooping down to see the Sun to being the Son that shepherds stooped down to see.  God so loved the world that He gave His Son to die on the cross for ALL types of people.  I must be in awe of God  and strive to see Him the way I should and people the way I should today.