“There are no atheists in rockets,” Artemis II pilot Victor Glover said, borrowing an old battlefield line and lifting it into the sky.
Reid Wiseman, after returning to earth, admitted, “I’m not really a religious person,” then told of seeing a cross and breaking down in tears because he had run out of explanations.
He left earth in flame and returned to it in tears. Psalm 8 begins in that same stunned country.
David looks up and says, “O Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!” Then he says it again at the end, as though wonder has walked him in a circle and brought him back to the same blazing center. This is prayer stripped down to its purest form. A soul turning toward God in admiration.
We have nearly forgotten how to do that.
David walks out under the night sky and lets the glory of God fall on him. He stands beneath the moon and stars and feels his own smallness without despair, because the heavens above him are not empty. “When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained” (Psalm 8:3).
The sky is not an accident scattered across darkness. It is workmanship. The stars are not wild sparks. They are placed there by the hand of God.
The same witness rises from the earth under our boots.
It speaks from the white flash of a crappie in dark water, from cedar roots gripping Ozark rock, from calves bawling in a spring pasture, from wind moving through sycamore leaves, from thunder rolling low over the hills, from the silent geometry inside a spider’s web jeweled with morning dew.
“The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork” (Psalm 19:1). Creation is never still. Day pours out speech. Night keeps preaching after the sun goes down.
A man can harden himself against that sermon. He can train his mouth to say chance, process, matter, time. Yet the world keeps pressing back with color, order, rhythm, proportion, force.
The river does not carve its banks with a message stamped into the mud, but its very being says there is a Maker. The hawk circling over a field says there is a Maker. The stars over a gravel road say there is a Maker. David saw it. Every honest man sees it when he stands still long enough.
Then the Psalm rises even higher. God’s glory shines through the earth, yet it also towers above the heavens. The brightest star in the night sky is already spending itself. Every sun is burning toward its appointed end. The whole created order is running on borrowed breath. God does not fade. He does not diminish. He is not wearing down by one degree. The Lord is full blaze forever.
Then David says something even more astonishing. This great God will have His praise in the earth. “Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength” (Psalm 8:2).
God sees to it that His glory will be spoken. He opens the mouths of children while the proud go blind with learning and self-importance.
That happened in Jerusalem when children cried, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” while religious men clenched their teeth. It still happens. God humbles the lofty and gives sight to the lowly. He fills weak lips with praise so that no flesh may boast before Him.
That leads David to the question that hangs over the whole Psalm like a bell struck in the night. “What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?” (Psalm 8:4).
Under that vast sky, human life seems like a breath on cold glass. One fever can break us. One phone call can empty a room. One grave can swallow a name that once filled a house. Yet God is mindful of man. God visits man.
God crowned him “with glory and honour” and gave him dominion over the works of His hands (Psalm 8:5-6). We are not beasts grazing our way toward dirt. We bear the image of God. We reason, judge, create, speak, worship and ache because eternity has brushed our hearts.
Still, the world does not look fully conquered. Sin runs through every city. Disease stalks strong bodies. Death keeps opening the ground. We do not yet see all things under man’s feet.
Hebrews gives the answer in one shining sentence: “But now we see not yet all things put under him. But we see Jesus” (Hebrews 2:8-9).
There is the hope of Psalm 8. Adam fell and the world fell with him. Since then every cemetery has preached the same grim sermon. We have joined his rebellion gladly enough. Our sin is not a flaw in the paint. It is rot in the beam.
We have failed to love God, failed to keep ourselves clean and failed to rule even our own hearts, much less the world.
So God sent another Man.
Jesus Christ came in flesh and blood. Into this ruined world He came without a stain, beneath the old stars David watched and onto the dust Adam handed down under curse.
Then He went to the cross and bore the judgment sinners earned. He tasted death for us. He rose on the third day. Now the Man who wore thorns wears the crown of heaven. Sin could not stain Him. Death could not hold Him. All things are under His feet.
That is where wonder must lead.
The cross is more than a symbol that stirs a man to tears. It is the place where guilty people are reconciled to God.
Come to Christ. Bring Him the whole wreck of your life. Bring the pride that kept you standing tall, the lust you hid, the bitterness you fed, the fear that wakes you in the dark. The One who made the stars has made a way for sinners to come home.
And when you see Him, truly see Him, you will say with David, “O Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!”
For more devotions click here.
Sign up for my email list here.
For a list of other essential Christian reads click here.
Enjoying this content? If you’d like to support my work and help me create more Bible-centered resources like this devotion, consider buying me a coffee! Your support means the world and helps keep this ministry going.
