Give thanks to him who made the heavens so skillfully.
His faithful love endures forever.
Psalm 136:5
This one verse is loaded with poignancy! It speaks of the transcendent One who made
the vast expanse of the heavens, so vast it is beyond our comprehension. He is the God who transcends our imagination
far above our greatest capacities to fathom even the most superficial
appreciation of his nature. Yet we know
from our own experience and the testimony to himself by which God reveals his nature in his Word: "His faithful love endures forever."
The psalmist’s proclamation contrasts God’s transcendence with his
immanence. Though lofty above
imagination, he is so personal, near, and intimate in his love for us. It is a love that is pure, sacrificial,
life-giving, and enduring in its faithfulness.
Is God only transcendent, sovereign and too distant for us to really
know and to be known? Or is God truly
immanent, so immanent that he is really just an imagined reflection of our own
understanding of our selves projected onto “god”?
The truth is conjunctive, both/and. We find it in Scripture and summarized in the
first two statements of the Apostle’s Creed:
1.
I
believe in God, Almighty, creator of heaven and earth,
2.
And in
Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord
The psalmist captures the both/and again in Psalm 8:1,3,4 – “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name
in all the earth . . . When I consider the heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and stars which you have set in place, what is man that you are
mindful of him, or the son of man that you care for him?
We are reminded of the conjunctive (both/and) of Jesus, both
one hundred percent human and one hundred percent divine, transcendent with the
Father and immanent now through the Holy Spirit, so far above and exalted, so close and
immeasurably more loving than we could ask or imagine.
The psalmist in the lead psalm above (136:5) who speaks of the
conjunctive of God’s transcendence and immanence, his remoteness and intimacy,
strikes the only chord of our hearts that is possible calling us to “GIVE
THANKS!”
O Lord, our thanksgiving spills over in to praise. You are both/and . . .
We give thanks to you. In all your unimaginable power and might,
you faithfully love us with an
everlasting love! Amen
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