Psalm
8 is responsible for a few contemporary Christian worship songs. I can remember the late 80’s take written by
Michael W Smith and performed by Sandi Patty.
If those names don’t sound familiar to you, don’t worry. Smith has achieved a certain level of
longevity with Christian Music, but Patty faded out of the picture by the mid
90’s. Other Christian songwriters have
also taken up the theme of this Psalm – Don Moen, Keith Green to name a few.
So
what’s so great about this psalm that it inspired people to put it into a
contemporary setting? All you have to do
is read the opening and closing lines of the Psalm. “Oh Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name
in all the earth! (Psalm 8:1, 9)” I can
almost hear the loud joyful nature with which David writes this line. It’s a line to shout from the mountain tops
when all is right with the world.
Of
course, it also leads David to consider the position of man. Given the universe that God created “what is
man that you are mindful of him” (Psalm 8:4).
God made man “a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him
with glory and honor” (Psalm 8:5). God
put man in charge of creation. God made
this magnificent planet filled with incredible plants and animal and he put us in charge of it! But don’t forget, it is God who put us in
charge, not ourselves.
Louie
Giglio takes up David’s point in his “reflections on Psalm 8” included in The Heart of Worship Files. Giglio mentions a photo of a perfect spiral
galaxy 30 million light-years away. The
accompanying article expounds on the greatness of man that we could build a
telescope and take a picture of a galaxy that far away. This is all wrong he argues. Instead the article should have been about
how cool it is that God placed all those stars in the heavens and formed them
into such a shape. The focus shouldn't be on how great we are (we aren't), but on how great our creator is. As worship leaders,
our focus should be on God and His glory and greatness. If we are leading correctly, we serve as
reflectors – reflecting the light shone on us back to God. David uses lots of pronouns for God in the
psalm. The focus really is on God and
the majesty of his creation. As leaders,
we need to keep the focus on God and not ourselves.
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