Praising God with Creation - Psalm 148

Praising God with Creation - Psalm 148


I grew up, and my parents still live, in a very small town called West Monroe; about a 30 minute drive north of Syracuse. When I was growing up there was only one blinking yellow light in the whole town, and there was only one church, and one small store and I was about 5 or 6 when the town finally organized a volunteer fire department. As part of a larger school district, West Monroe doesn’t even have its own elementary school. At both ends of my road were dairy farms, and there were two more dairy farms less than a mile away on the crossroad. Driving anywhere in the spring and fall often meant breathing in the pungent smell of cow manure being spread as fertilizer.

The block my parents’ house is on is about 2 and ½ miles in circumference and most of the land in the middle is woods, with a swamp in the center. My parents choose to build their house back in these woods on their 4 acres. In the summer one can hardly see the house from the road. Hemlocks and beach, white pine and maples surround the house, which only had a bit of a front lawn when I was growing up.

It was a wonderful place to play. My dad made a swing secured between two trees and a sand box in back of the house. The space under the umbrella branches of a hemlock became my pretend house. The shallow vernal stream and ponds between our house and the road became an adventure course: trying to cross over the stream on fallen logs to get to a little island; “fishing” for leaves with a stick, and “skating” on an icy area in the winter until I hit a thin patch and my boot would fill with icy water and I had to walk the dozen yards back home. My brother and other neighbor children and I would often make picnics and eat them out under the trees.

I learned to love the other creatures that lived in our woods. We had several bird feeders and I loved to watch the different birds coming to eat and the silly antics of the squirrels trying to outsmart my mechanical engineer father’s newest attempt to keep them out of the seeds. My parents taught me the names of the birds, and which songs they sang. Sometimes we would see deer and rabbits. When I was little I went to sleep in the spring to the peepers and in the summer to the song of the whip-poor-will, and as I got older a population of turkeys developed. I came to know many plants, the prodigious ground pine, and wild winter mint, the rare and beautiful trillium and the very occasional lady slipper. I used to plant the red berries of the mayflowers in my sand box. I loved turning over rocks and logs to find the creepy crawly bugs and worms scurrying below. I would catch toads, salamanders, frogs, fireflies and caterpillars and sometimes keep them for a while. My neighbor even taught me how to pick up the little snakes in the woods before I was 5 years old.

I also learned to love the elements. The sound and smell of summer rain falling on the leaves; the feeling of safety when I was in my house and the thunder clapped all around; the sound of the branches creaking against each other in a strong wind, and the cozy feeling of being at home by the fire while the snow was falling, snow on snow.

And then there were the stars. We didn’t even have streetlights on the corners when I was a kid, so the stars and the moon were the brightest and clearest. I learned some of the constellations by name; Orion became my favorite.

Even living so closely with nature, my parents usually took us camping when we went on vacation. We tented in many national and state parks; canoed in the lakes and streams trying to sneak up on beavers; climbed mountains in the Adirondacks, and Catskills; hiked to lovely waterfalls; explored the sea side at Manasquan, NJ, Arcadia National Park and Eastham, Cape Cod; spelunked through Mammoth cave in Kentucky; picked wild strawberries and blueberries; biked along old bits of the Erie Canal. I also frequented the local Girl Scout camp in the summers, eventually spending three whole summers living in platform tents as part of the staff. When looking at colleges I easily chose one located in an old apple orchard at the foot of the Holyoke Mt. range over the one on Commonwealth Ave. in Boston.

Coming to know so much of God’s creation so intimately; it is easy to read Psalms like 148 that invite all creation to praise God together. Creation praises God naturally, just by being and doing what God created it to be and do. The cosmos around us knows and expresses joy every day. And what is more hopeful than nature? Look at the life that comes back even after a forest fire. Look at the persistence of the dandelions even when people try all manner of banning them from their lawns. Look at the moss, which will grow on a roof, the trees, which will seed themselves in our gutters, and the flowers, which will start to grow even in the cracks of pavement if given half a chance. When we develop our relationship with the other creatures of this universe the scripture passages which treat nature as a being, almost an enchanted being, will no longer seem simply poetic, or fanciful. The mountains and the hills can break forth in singing and trees of the field do clap their hands. The real invitation is for us to recognize ourselves as part of creation and join together in the constant cacophony of praise.

What if we woke every morning and crowed like a rooster? Hallelujah! What if we sang quiet peaceful songs before we went to sleep each night? All night, all day, angels watchin’ over me my Lord… What if we frequently let feelings of delight well up within us like the geysers and spill out into our smiles and our speech, our thoughts and our actions?

What does all this have to do with Christmas? It is only the second day of Christmas after all. It hinges on the song of the angels at the time of Christ’s birth. Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace. It also has to do with the gospel of John’s description of Christ as the Word, present with God at creation, through whom the Father made all things. The meaning of the incarnation of God has a bigger meaning than we usually imagine. Christ is in a loving relationship with all of creation, not just with the human population. The joy of Emmanuel, God with us, is known to the whole world, and to the heavens above.

So let us participate with creation in taking delight in the Lord. Let us “make a list of God’s gracious dealings, and all the things God has done that need praising;” God’s “compassion lavished and love extravagant. ” Let every heart prepare room to receive Christ our king and let us raise up our voices with every creature in heaven and earth to sing God’s praise.