Week 21 Psalm 148
Psalm Summary: everything that’s created should praise the creator.
On the surface it sounds plausible until you read on a bit and see that the writer included in the Everything category: a) created things that actually have – as far as I can see – the capacity to praise and b) created things that – as far as I can see – lack the capacity.
I can see where an angel has the capacity to praise the Lord. But not a star. I can see that a man has the capacity to praise the Lord. But not hail. I sit wondering what I can do at this border that divides what I think I see from what I don’t.
I have no problem understanding how all created things that can think & communicate can praise the Lord. But the writer names several created things – snow and cedar trees – that cannot think or communicate but that are supposed to praise the Lord.
From my perspective I’m tempted to say definitively that a limestone cliff cannot praise the Lord. But since I don’t know every thing that there is to know maybe I should back up. Maybe a wall of limestone – that can be shown by 21st century detection-technology to be absolutely and totally inanimate and beyond any measurable capacity to communicate – is emanating some kind – a qualitatively different kind – of praise.
I’m not saying limestone hums. I’m just saying I don’t hear it.
But it’s something to keep on the back-burner.