The following is a guest article by T. M. Moore

Image: Creative Commons under Unsplash

It was because God so loved the world (the cosmos) that He sent Jesus for its redemption.

Psalm 8 reminds us that God has filled the world, from the vault of heaven to the most helpless babe in arms, with His majesty, splendor, glory, and might, the awareness of which is powerful even to silence the adversaries of the Lord.

In the midst of this glorious splendor and beauty, God has appointed human beings as caretakers, to restore the creation to its pristine goodness (cf. Gen. 1; Ps. 27.13) by subjecting the world in its groaning to the liberty of the sons and daughters of God and the redeeming grace and truth of the Lord (Rom. 8.19–21; 2 Cor. 5.17–21). We are called to restore the God-loved world and to apply ourselves in grace, truth, and Christian liberty to every discipline and recourse that will allow and enable us to do so. Here is the basis for the Christian worldview, the vision of restoration which we so earnestly seek.

As Hebrews 2.8 reminds us, we will not complete this glorious restoration in the here and now; at the same time, longing to achieve it, and to make the knowledge of the glory of the Lord known throughout all the world (Hab. 2.14), keeping our eyes on Jesus, we seek the restoration of all things for which He died and rose again, and over which He rules at the Father’s right hand.

So, I invite you to meditate prayerfully on Psalm 8, to which I’ve added Hebrews 2.8–9 to complete its intent.

O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory above the heavens.

Out of the mouth of babes and infants, you have established strength

because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger.

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

the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,

what is man that you are mindful of him,

and the son of man that you care for him?

Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings

and crowned him with glory and honor.

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

you have put all things under his feet,

all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field,

the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea,

whatever passes along the paths of the seas.

[{Hebrews 2:8–9} ⁸ … Now in putting everything in subjection to him,

he left nothing outside his control.

At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him.

But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus,

crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death,

so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.]

O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

T. M. Moore is Principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition, www.ailbe.org.