God's glory is a happy thing, yet...

^{Psalm 19}

¹ The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
² Day to day pours out speech,
and night to night reveals knowledge.
³ There is no speech, nor are there words,
whose voice is not heard.
⁴ Their voice goes out through all the earth,
and their words to the end of the world.
In them he has set a tent for the sun,
⁵ which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber,
and, like a strong man, runs its course with joy.
⁶ Its rising is from the end of the heavens,
and its circuit to the end of them,
and there is nothing hidden from its heat.

The heaven and the sky may be communicating to us without literal words but this psalm enlightened us on what they are trying to do: to declare God's glory as a good and joyful thing. Notice the picture it paints. There is not even a hint of any terrible sign in this psalm.

Then there is verse 5. The sun "comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber, and, like a strong man, runs its course with joy"! Though we know that it is the earth that is orbiting around the sun, here the sun is described as a person, running with joy, ceaselessly! For all who walk on the Earth, there is no one who cannot feel or see the sun's presence. God's glory is declared with joy every moment. The glory of God has got to the happiest reality in the universe for the creation of God to do this continual declaration!

Yet, as pointed out by John Piper, human beings have a strange malady that makes the ordinary glories of each day almost invisible, and certainly less interesting than their imitations in theaters and television.

Here is something Clyde Kilby, a former literature teacher at Wheaton College, said.

The fall of man can hardly be more forcefully felt than simply than noting what we all do with a fresh snowfall or the first buds of spring. On Monday they fill us with delight and meaning and on Tuesday we ignore them. No amount of shouting to us that is all wrong changes the fact for very long...Only some aesthetic power which is akin to God's own creativity has the capability for renewal, for giving us the power to see.

As Christians, we ought to have better eyes than people in general for seeing the wonders that day and night pour forth. We ought to be the kind of people who walk out of the house in the morning with the same sense of expectancy that we take when we see the creation of God for the first time.

May God give us the power to see His glory in all His creation and wield the world in the fight for joy.