Who Are We?

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,

    the moon and the stars that you have established;

what are humans that you are mindful of them,

    mortals that you care for them?

Yet you have made them a little lower than God

    and crowned them with glory and honor.

You have given them dominion over the works of your hands;

    you have put all things under their feet,

all sheep and oxen,

    and also the beasts of the field,

the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea,

    whatever passes along the paths of the seas.

-Psalm 8:3-8

Have you ever been somewhere that made you feel small? I do not mean small as in “belittled.” We do not need help from nature to make us feel that way; we are quite adept at doing it to one another. What I mean is, have you ever been somewhere, or witnessed something, that made you realize how small your existence is in relation to the massive expanse of creation? There are places in the world that seem to stretch our imaginations beyond their normal limits. They remind us that the world is much older, much larger, and much more mysterious than the little corner of it we usually occupy.

When Rachael was finishing her undergrad degree, she had an internship with a company in the Bay Area of California, and when I would fly out to visit, we would travel around. If you ever find yourself in San Francisco and drive just north of the Golden Gate Bridge, maybe 30–45 minutes outside the city, you will come across Muir Woods National Monument. It is one of the few remaining protected old-growth redwood forests in the area, and it is well worth the drive. The woods are absolutely stunning. Many of the trees are hundreds of years old, around 200 feet tall, with trunks that can reach nearly 20 feet in diameter. Walking beneath those behemoth trees makes you feel like you have shrunk down to the size of an ant. It is a surreal experience.

If you ever have the chance to visit some of the famous cathedrals of the world — Notre Dame, Sacré-Cœur, St. Paul’s, Sagrada Família, St. John the Divine — you may notice that their interiors are cavernous, and their architectural features usually draw your eyes upward toward ornate ceilings. This is a purposeful design. They are built to make worshipers feel small, not insignificant, but small in relation to the divine. I have been lucky enough to explore several of these cathedrals in my lifetime, and as beautiful and effective as they are, none of them has done this for me quite like Muir Woods. To drive the comparison home, there is a section of the woods called “Cathedral Grove” where visitors are invited to sit in silence as they contemplate the beauty of that place. There is something about standing beneath living pillars older than our country that makes humility feel less like a virtue we are trying to cultivate and more like the only reasonable response.

That is the feeling at the heart of Psalm 8. The psalmist looks at the heavens, the moon and the stars, the vast work of God’s fingers, and asks, “What are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?” It is an astonishing question. In all the ways the natural world makes us feel small, it also invites us to wonder at the mystery that the God who made all of this still knows us, still loves us, and still entrusts us with care for the works of God’s hands. We are not the center of creation, but we are not forgotten either. We are small, yes, but somehow, by the grace of God, we are also seen and loved.

Rev. Ryan Young