Day, March 3—This Is My Father’s World

This is my Father’s world,
And to my listening ears
All nature sings, and round me rings
The music of the spheres.
This is my Father’s world:
I rest me in the thought
Of rocks and trees, of skies and seas–
His hand the wonders wrought.
(“This Is My Father’s World” by Maltbie D. Babcock)

As he rode along, the crowds spread out their garments on the road ahead of him. When he reached the place where the road started down the Mount of Olives, all of his followers began to shout and sing as they walked along, praising God for all the wonderful miracles they had seen. “Blessings on the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in highest heaven!” But some of the Pharisees among the crowd said, “Teacher, rebuke your followers for saying things like that!” He replied, “If they kept quiet, the stones along the road would burst into cheers!” (Luke 19:36–40 NLT)

Pythagoras of ancient Greece identified that the length of the string on a musical instrument was inversely proportional to the pitch of the note produced when strumming it; the shorter the string, the higher the pitch. He then surmised that the heavenly bodies, being so large and so numerous, must similarly produce a kind of music based on their orbital length. Though we know now this is not true—the planets as a whole are not creating music—the innumerable atoms that form those planets are. As many of us learned in third grade science, soundwaves are created when an object vibrates. If the object vibrates within a certain range of frequencies, we can perceive it as sound. Because every atom is constantly vibrating, they are, in essence, creating unending, inaudible music. In 2014, scientists conducted a study that was able to measure the sound created by an atom, discovering that it was a D note, twenty octaves higher than the highest note on a grand piano and utterly beyond the ability of any living creature to hear.

All that God has made—not just mankind—is actively praising Him, and all of creation is eagerly awaiting the restoration of all things, a process that began in earnest with the ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus and will come into fullness when He establishes the new heaven and new earth. When we sing, we are simply joining in the ever-present, ongoing song of praise in celebration of our Father above. Sing a celebratory psalm to the King who has come in the name of the Lord, praising Him for all the miracles He has done in your life and in the world.

 

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