Who Am I, Under All These Stars?

David grew up sleeping outdoors with his father's sheep,
and a shepherd boy sees a great deal of sky.

On clear nights the flock lay down in the grass,
woolly lumps breathing in the dark,
and David lay on his back beside them and looked up.
The stars came out, one, then ten, then more than anyone could count.
(The sheep never looked up.
Sheep mostly look at grass.)

Years later, when David was king,
he made a song out of those nights
and gave it to the leader of the singers.
It begins with a shout and ends with the same shout:

"O LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!"

(Majestic means so great and so glorious
that a king's best crown looks like a paper one beside it.)

"You have set your glory above the heavens," David sang.
"From the mouths of babies and nursing children
you have built a wall against your enemies,
so the enemy has to hush."

(Babies mostly say "goo."
God can build a wall out of that.)

Then David remembered the sky.

"When I look at your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars you set in their places,
what is a person, that you think about him?
What is a son of man, that you care for him?"

(Fingers! For God, hanging the stars was fine work,
like threading beads.)

The God who hung the moon
looked at people made from dust
and put a crown on their heads.

"You made him only a little lower than the heavenly ones," David sang,
"and crowned him with glory and honor.
You gave him charge of everything your hands have made
and put it all under his feet:
the sheep and the oxen, the wild animals of the field,
the birds of the air, the fish of the sea,
everything that swims the paths of the seas."

It was a shepherd's job, as wide as the world.
And David ended his song where he began:
"O LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!"

But in the daytime the crown looked crooked.
Lions still crept up on the flock.
The people God had crowned grabbed and fought,
and even King David's own sons fought each other for his throne.

King after king sat on David's throne,
and not one of them could wear that crown straight.

Then another son of man was born in David's town.
For a little while he was made lower than the angels,
the heavenly ones in David's song,
yet the wind and the sea did what he said.
In the temple, children shouted praise to him,
and when the leaders were furious,
he answered with David's song:
"Have you never read,
'From the mouths of babies and nursing children
you have made praise'?"

Soon after, soldiers twisted thorns into a crown for him,
and he died on a cross.
On the third day God raised him from the dead,
and now Jesus wears the crown of glory and honor,
with everything God made under his feet.

Now the crown sits straight, because the one wearing it is Jesus.
"O LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!"