Mission Glory, number seven. Welcome to Welling for your Spiritual Health and Growth, for your Spiritual Well-Being, and Your Life Overflowing. We are in a series addressing the question, what’s your life about? It’s Mission Glory. We’ve looked at mission glory, what, mission glory, who.
Today, we address mission glory where, because our text talks about the where of cosmic splendor, where God is acknowledged in the heavens and the Earth. All of us know the huge real estate slogan which talks about location, location, location. Apparently, a UK property dealer was the one who coined that phrase, one of the largest real estate property companies. Location, location, location. I’m told there’s even a TV series named Location, Location, Location.
I also heard a humorous story of air traffic control calling out to a flight, saying, flight 381, flight 381. Please confirm your location. Over. And the voice came back from the pilot, this is flight 381. We are in the sky. Over. I’m glad that the pilot acknowledged that he was in the sky. That’s a pretty wide location. I think he was assuring them that they were all alive and flying. There was relief, overall.
But today, I speak on location, location, location, the place, the position, the situation from which God gets the glory. The psalmist says, “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the Earth,” every square meter, every square foot, every square kilometer, or 248,000 million square kilometers? And then he says, “you’ve displayed your splendor about the heavens.”
I mean, everywhere that there’s created bodies, God’s majesty is seen, cosmic splendor, cosmic praise. Creation already reflects the glory of God on a cosmic scale. On the heavens, above the heavens. I have some basic interest in elemental astronomy, and I get those videos and statistics and numbers of how quickly the numbers are changed as new stars are found and even new planets beyond the basic few are found even in our own system.
And we look through the most intelligent of telescopes. They also try to name stars after you and make some money out of it. But it is just spectacular. It is staggering. Even the sight of a simple sunset or a full moon evokes glory and wonder in us.
In August of 2021, the world’s largest astronomy museum opened up in Shanghai, China. I hope I get a chance to go there. But when the architect was proposing his design for this fabulous building, he talked about how this dynamic form will reflect the fundamental principles that shape our universe. That was the architect’s proposal.
He had an oculus– I hear it’s beautiful- an inverted dome, a sphere, a reflective pool where the sun’s movement in the position of the day, they’re all tracked and reflected in a very large place. I believe the divine architect is making another proposal to the human race to acknowledge His glory and His majesty from the celestial bodies He has created. But deeper than that in dynamic form, to acknowledge Him in wonder and worship.
Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, said mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis of man’s desire to understand. Mystery creates wonder. This magnificent reality with the mystery of us little human beings wondering, and the only ones who wonder and try to understand, but that wonder needs to lead to worship, worshipping God from where we are on this beautiful blue planet, which, in its own if you were to study it in its micro situations and its macro revelations, it’s wonder.
It’s mystery. It’s worship. It’s acknowledging the worth of God and the weight of God. Important words. The worship of God has a wonder component. It has a worth component and a weight component.
This is not just wondering who God is, but wondering of how great God is and giving Him the worth that He’s due as God. We often give other things far more worth than God Himself who deserves all worth. And then giving him weight as the one who is the most important influencing factor in our lives.
Some time ago, 2011, NASA sent out a spacecraft called Glory mission to collect data, physical, chemical stuff in order to address matters of “solar irradiance,” they say, and long-term climate record. It went up in fanfare and then blew up in flames. It was launched, but it did not reach orbit.
Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to say that if we don’t give God the worship that He’s due in wonder, in worth, and in weight, we won’t reach orbit. We will fail. I’m grateful that a psalmist says right from where you are, at this point it’s from my house desk, speaking to you out of a QuickTime Player, or in your functions, wherever God has placed you,
I want you to heed the psalmist. “How majestic is your name in all the Earth, whose place is splendor above the heavens,” from the Earth to the heavens cosmic praise. Give Him the worth that is due to Him, the weight that is due to Him, all in the wonder of worship.