Psalm 8:1 NKJV
O Lord, our Lord,
How excellent is Your name in all the earth,
Who have set Your glory above the heavens!
Understanding God’s Presence
MY NOTES
O Lord, our Lord, How excellent is Your name in all the earth, Who have set Your glory above the heavens! Psalm 8:1 NKJV
David almost can’t finish the sentence. “O Lord, our Lord—” and then he marvels. You know that feeling if you have ever tried to put God into words. You can’t. Not really. Not even half of Him.
His greatness does not fit in a heart or a paragraph. Look around. The world is already saying it. Power. Goodness. Wisdom. It is all out in the open.
Everything that lives—from us down to the worm in the dirt—eats from His hand. The universe does not hold itself up. He does. And He is not “somewhere.” He is here. There. The empty valley. The crowded street. There is no place you can go and not find that the Lord is already there.
David says the Name is excellent in all the earth. Then he lifts his eyes and says the glory is higher still—set above the heavens. Above all that light, He has a throne, and the brightness there doesn’t have a name we can use.
Take a quiet canyon sometime. Rock walls shooting up, a sliver of sky, maybe nobody else has walked it. The moss has not felt a foot before. God was already there—holding the cliffs, scenting the flowers, keeping the pines alive.
Go under the sea if you want, down where the water barely moves. He is in that stillness too. Fly as far as morning can take you. He is waiting.
Psalm 139:7–10 NKJV
Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend into heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there. If I take the wings of the morning, And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, Even there Your hand shall lead me, And Your right hand shall hold me.
Up as high as you can imagine, down as low as you fear—He is in both. Praised in one. Just in the other. He lives there. He works there. Always.
The night sky can’t keep up with Him. His glory outruns the stars.
Psalm 19:1 NKJV
The heavens declare the glory of God; And the firmament shows His handiwork.
The sky preaches. It still does not contain Him. Above all that light He has a throne, and the brightness there does not have a name we can use.
Job had the right instinct.
Job 9:8–10 NKJV
He alone spreads out the heavens, And treads on the waves of the sea; He made the Bear, Orion, and the Pleiades, And the chambers of the south; He does great things past finding out, Yes, wonders without number.
Nehemiah said it simply.
Nehemiah 9:6 NKJV
You alone are the Lord; You have made heaven, The heaven of heavens, with all their host, The earth and everything on it, The seas and all that is in them, And You preserve them all. The host of heaven worships You.
This song is aimed at God because only God fully knows God. Faith can be wrecked with wonder at what it sees. It still has not seen it all.
And that little word “our”—that is the part that steadies you. Not just Lord. Our Lord. Excellent is a high word. It still is not high enough. If the name is that high, what is He like? The sky itself cannot hold the answer. He set His glory above the heavens. We were never going to finish the sentence. And maybe that is the point.
So do not wait until you can explain Him. Start where David started. Say the Name. Claim the “our”. Look at the earth. Look past the stars. Then let wonder do what we never could.
Prayer
O Lord, our Lord, Your name is excellent in all the earth, and we still have not said enough. You hold the cliffs and the seas and the stars, and You have not left us outside the story. Thank You that we cannot flee Your presence—and do not have to. Teach us to stop explaining long enough to worship. Set our eyes above the heavens, and keep that little word our warm in our mouths. I praise You in the mighty name of Jesus, Amen.
Key Takeaways
- God’s name is excellent in all the earth; His glory is higher than the sky that preaches it.
- There is no empty room in the universe. Presence is not a mood. It is a fact.
- Wonder is not a failure of words. Sometimes it is the only honest sentence left.
- The comfort is in the pronoun: not a distant Lord, but our Lord.
- You do not have to finish the description to begin the praise.
Proverb for Today
Open your mouth for the speechless, In the cause of all who are appointed to die. Open your mouth, judge righteously, And plead the cause of the poor and needy. Proverbs 31:8-9 NKJV
Daily Scripture
“Judge not, and you shall not be judged. Condemn not, and you shall not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you.” Luke 6:37-38 NKJV
Closing
“The Lord bless you and keep you; The Lord make His face shine upon you, And be gracious to you; The Lord lift up His countenance upon you, And give you peace.” Numbers 6:24-26 NKJV
Grace be with you. Amen.
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