Thinking About Psalm 24

Recently, my family traveled to Montana for our annual family vacation. We spent about ten days in and around Glacier National Park, which is located in the northwestern corner of the state. Glacier, and the surrounding area, is absolutely stunning. The high, rugged snow capped peaks of the National Park have been referred to as “America’s Alps”.

Glacier is filled with all kinds of marvelous wild life. During our forays into the park we saw mountain goats, big horn sheep and mule deer. I was more than a little disappointed that we never saw either a black bear or a grizzly bear. As a matter of fact, my family told me to stop saying, “Now if I were a bear, I think I’d be standing right over here.” I would utter those words whenever we drove or hiked past a clearing in the woods that looked like it should be populated by a bear. (Truth be told, the only way I wanted to see a grizzly was from the safe confines of my car. Grizzlies have killed and mauled people in Glacier.)

While hiking around and driving around Glacier National Park the words of the 24th Psalm kept echoing in my head; “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it”. I said those words out loud as I was hiking down a snow covered mountainside. Across an alpine valley I saw sheer mountain cliffs, glowing with an impossibly beautiful orange color in the afternoon sun. I had just seen, standing within four of five feet of me a female mountain goat and her kid. (Some of the animals in the park are so used to people they will wander right up to you.) I was so inspired by what I saw that I started to sing “This is My Father’s World”. No one, except for God, was around to hear my praise.

After being in such a beautiful place it is more than a little hard to return to the normal work-a-day world. While waiting in the line to be poked and prodded by the TSA inspectors before boarding our return flight home, I found it hard to believe that a mere two days before I had been in such a marvelous place. Looking at my fellow harried travelers, taking off their shoes before going through the airplane screening devices, the words of the 24th Psalm seemed faraway and distant to me.

It is easy to believe those words, “The earth is the Lord’s” when you are looking at a beautiful landscape, be it lofty mountain peaks or the pounding surf of the ocean. Yet, those words are true when you are standing in line in an airport or in the grocery store. Those words are true when you are driving. Those words are true at all times and in all places.

Everything, absolutely everything in this world of ours does indeed belong to God, who fashioned us and created us. After returning from Glacier I realized that when those words are confined to praise at the goodness of God’s creation they are kept somewhat safe and distant. The words of David in the Psalm are radical and challenging precisely because of what they say, “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world and those who live in it.”

That’s pretty heady stuff. As I write these word to you, I see scattered across my desk the following items: the computer screen and keyboard, the case for my reading glasses, my cell phone, a pen, some business cards and a container of paper clips. (There is actually more, my desk, at the moment is very cluttered.) Do the words of the Psalm mean that all that stuff I listed is God’s? Are the words to be taken so literally that they mean that my new Glacier National Park coffee mug is the property of God? After all, I shelled out the cash for the mug. Wasn’t that my money that bought the mug?

The Psalm is pretty clear, it seems to me. Sure, those lovely mountains in northwestern Montana belong to God, but so does the clutter on the desk belong to God. I merely get to use the paper clips, drink my coffee from the mug, (Opps! The coffee in the mug is God’s, too.), and borrow the cell phone. All the things that we think we have and we think we possess belong to God.

This realization, and it can be a hard one, might just lead us to be better stewards of what God gives to us. To realize that everything we have belongs to God, who in his great goodness and love gives us things for a time, should fill us with a profound sense of awe and gratitude. I felt a profound sense of awe and gratitude when I looked at those stunning mountain peaks, why don’t I feel the same sense of awe and gratitude when I’m sipping my coffee?

Psalm 24:1 can help us to recover a proper sense of awe and gratitude for all that God has done for us. As Luther reminds us in the Small Catechism, the daily bread that we pray for in the Lord’s Prayer includes, but is not limit to, “everything that belongs to the support and wants of the body, such as meat, drink, clothing, shoes, house, homestead, field, cattle, money, goods, a pious spouse, pious children, pious servants, pious and faithful magistrates, good government, good weather, peace, health, discipline, honor, good friends, faithful neighbors, and the like.” All of these things, and much, much more come from and belong to God, who loves us so very much that we gives us even mundane things like computer keyboards, coffee mugs and cell phones.

I need to live out my life in realization of Psalm 24:1. All of these marvelous and mundane things belong to God. God is so very good to me that He gives me all things. For this I should always honor, praise and glorify His Holy Name. And so should you, as well.