I grew up in a small town in Kansas. In the evening, I loved looking up to see the stars and the moon. Even now when I go home to visit, I am amazed by the clear night sky. Without the lights of the city, there are far more stars visible than I can see in the night sky of Atlanta.
The moon shines incredibly brightly, too. I remember my childhood theory about the crescent moon that I saw. I determined that the small curved shape I saw was actually God’s thumbnail, slipping through the outer veil of the universe. In Sunday School we sang, “He’s got the whole world in His hands.” So in my imagination, I saw a big, mighty, powerful God holding the whole world and all of outer space in the palm of His hands. He held on so tightly that the edge of His thumbnail slipped through. It had to be true. I saw it regularly in the night sky.
Years later, and several graduate and post-graduate degrees later, I know that seeing the moon as God’s thumbnail was just a child’s way of thinking and imagining. However, even though it was just a child’s thought, it was not childish. I sometimes wonder if I understood God better when I was a child than I do now. Psalm 95 reminds me, “In his hand are the depths of the earth” (v. 4). So maybe my childhood imagination of God’s holding the whole world in His hand wasn’t so far off after all.
As I consider the greatness of God, how big, how mighty, how powerful, how incredibly and totally awesome He is (even big enough to hold the whole world in His hand), my best response today is simply to obey the command that comes in verse 6: “Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.” One who is that big deserves our humble and complete adoration.