Creation Care. Climate Change. Global Warming. Environmental Stewardship. For some folks, the choice of which term you use is a political statement. This lengthy psalm does not choose up sides, but is clear that the created order is the work of God.
Among the creatures that get mentioned in this psalm are the clouds, the sea, human beings, light, the wind, dirt, mountains, valleys, wild animals, donkeys, coney (rabbit), birds, grass, cattle, grape drink, bread, cooking oil, trees, goats, storks, moon, sun, lions, whales, dust...No wonder the psalm begins and ends with “Bless the Lord, O my soul!”
Ancient cultures often saw the sea as an enemy, as a place of evil. (How about the flood that destroyed life all around Noah?) In Psalm 104:6-9, the psalmist names all the ways that God has conquered the waters and put such water into the places God chooses. God is so in charge of the ocean that it can be a place of sport (Psalm 104:26). For the psalmist, when God controls the waters, God has put evil in its place.
Did this creation just evolve or did God snap fingers and it was done? The psalmist seems to think that God’s creation moved from one stage to another. The waters flee (verse 7). Grass has to grow (verse 14). Food comes in due season (verse 27). Things are born and things die (verses 29-30). Things happen in a season (verse 19). Trees have to be planted before they can grow (verse 16). Plants have to mature (verse 14). These images suggest that the psalmist understood that everything in God’s creation did not happen at once.
The bottom line for the psalmist is that creation is God’s gift. Most of the psalm names before God all the things God has done as creator and provider. The closing verse (verse 35) seems to break a bit from the joyous and upbeat nature of this psalm. What bothers the psalmist is that sinners do not acknowledge God as the divine creator, what Richard Clifford calls “the source of the wonderful world.” The psalmist suspects that such people will not take care of the gift God has entrusted to humankind. “Let’s have no more of that disregard for God’s creation,” he says. The final word is “Praise the Lord!”
