Our children were exultant all week, running on the beach with friends and enjoying their classes while the adults sat on the porch, walked on the trails, sang hymns and listened to our teacher. This year's speaker was president of a Christian college who is also an enthusiastic hobby scientist. He led us through a survey of some of the scientific world's latest discoveries and theories. The more that brilliant people wrestle with the hugeness of galaxies and the tiny intricacy of DNA and atoms, the more they marvel, often concluding that something other than random chance had to create such a universe.

As we tried to absorb mind-stretching facts about astronomy and physics, we also studied some psalms.

By the word of the LORD were the heavens made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth.

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. (Psalm 33:6, 19:1, 8:1).

Meditation on the glory of God as seen through his unutterably huge, unutterably tiny, unutterably complex creation was fitting in the setting of such splendid natural beauty. It was perfect to learn about the impossible, intricate complexities that people are starting to discover and then sing “I Sing the Mighty Power of God” or watch a full moon rise over the bay.

Then we came home.

Saturday evening I sat at the computer and looked up at the “Adoption by Grace” sign hanging on the office wall. And I wondered what those “Wow” moments at Cedar Campus had to do with the emails, bills, and daily life I was returning to. In days filled with parenting, house-maintenance, soccer and gymnastics and piano – and keeping up with friends and church business – I try to carve out time to write about adoption. And I wonder if it matters. I sit in front of a screen, putting words together. I read about articles and blogs and books about adoption for the sake of my understanding and writing as well as for my two sons. And there seems to be a disconnect between this very small work and the vastness of God's creation. How can the God who made billions of galaxies (I can't get my mind around the size of one galaxy, let alone billions), how can such a God care about that “Adoption by Grace” sign on our wall and Phil's labor of love in writing The Little Girl and all the person-by-person conversations we have to try to encourage others who are engaged in foster care, orphan care and adoption? This all seems so small and irrelevant. In the scope of all of the universe and all of history, can it be that God is really engaged in this minuscule effort for orphans. Does it really matter?

How can it be that the God who names all the stars, spinning in their unfathomable galactic space, also cares to help me put words together on a computer screen, and gives food to orphans through weak men and women?

I do not know. But I realize that this is the question that others have asked, long before modern science's mind-stretching discoveries. “When I consider 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, the son of man that you care for him?” (Psalm 8:3)

It is this God himself who pairs the greatness of his creation with his intimate involvement in our daily lives. After the psalmist says “By the word of the LORD were the heavens made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth,” he continues “But the eyes of the LORD are on those who fear him, on those whose hope is in his unfailing love, to deliver them from death and keep them alive in famine.” (Psalm 33:6, 18-19).

Many times in the Bible, a description of God as awesome creator is paired with a description of him as caretaker of the weak and needy. (see Psalm 146 for another example)

In our time and culture, we sometimes lose sight of the wonder of God's majestic greatness. We are casual when we talk about him and to him. It is good to regain awe through sitting in beautiful creation, reading the latest about big bang theory, or getting absorbed in worshipful music. And then, when we come back from that awe to our smaller circle of parenting, paperwork, and complex-seeming world, we remember that the Lord who made the galaxies also says he cares about the fall of a sparrow and the tears of a child, and that he invites us to continue our worship through the tending of these sparrows and children.

O Great God, help me to see your glory in the small things of my life. Amen.

www.adoption-by-grace.com

Copyright 2007, Kristin Wong.