Even though I have heard some mixed reviews about them, the new "smart phones" with the Android operating system offer an amazing app called "Google Sky." When the phone is held out to the horizon, the screen shows the stars and constellations visible at that trajectory. It’s the digital equivalent of the star chart wheels we used to play with in science class. It’s really cool, and it’s an amazing learning tool. But it can teach you more than astronomy. I contend that it can teach you theology.

Picture the psalmist sitting out on a Palestinian hillside. Black skies are pierced by stars in a way that most of who live in or near electrically lit cities don’t even know how to imagine. He’s just stunned — stunned into worship and reflection.

If God’s glory has been set above the heavens, then imagine, if you even can, God’s astonishing glory, considering how almost incomprehensively vast the universe is.

If you have seen some of the images from the Hubble telescope, just imagine what David could have written about the glory of God if he had seen them. The star filled sky inspired him to more words than most of the rest of us could come up with. And even the Hubble is only scratching the surface.

Just for grins, here are a few simple statistics:

• A beam of light takes eight minutes to cross the 93 million miles between Earth and the sun.

• If you make our solar system — the sun and eight planets — the relative size of a quarter, that makes our galaxy the size of North America.

• If you were to count the stars in our galaxy, one per second, it would take you 2,500 years to count them all.

• The Milky Way galaxy contains billions of stars, but our galaxy is only one of at least 200 billion galaxies.

But in contrast to how big God is, this vast universe is simply tiny. After all, the psalmist wrote that God’s fingers set the stars into their places. That would make God’s massive hands billions of light years wide. Psalm 147:4 says that God not only determines the number of the stars, he gives to all of them their names.

Kind David is looking at the heavens and saying that God is more majestic than the starry host. But then it gets personal. If God is that big, then what is God doing paying attention to something as small as — *gulp* — me?

If our earth is that quarter somewhere in North America, then our state is like that molecule of pocket lint on it. And we’re like a quark in the nucleus of one atom of pocket lint. Trade in the telescopes for microscopes; the truth is that we are so small, we’re nowhere to be found.

Given this comparative sizing, how heart-stopping is the realization that God is mindful of — caring toward — each of the 300 billion lint atom quarks on this quarter?

While God counts and names the trillions of stars, God goes so much further with each of us, designing us each uniquely. God knows what makes us tick, hears our prayers when we cry out and cares about each one of us. We should feel awe. Honor. Divinely inflated self-worth. All that beauty to look at, and God pays attention to us.

Google the question "Is there life on other planets?" and you’ll find scores of Trek-geek chat pages debating the question. You’ll read a common argument in favor of E.T. — there must be life on other planets because the universe is too large if it is just a habitat for us.

But what if the universe doesn’t exist just to be a habitat for life? What if the primary purpose of the universe is nothing but a mind-blowing, infinite art display by God? What if it is so vast that its purpose is to dwarf us and magnify its Maker? What if the reaches of the cosmos serve to remind us that God is better to us than our small perspectives suggest? That’s how astronomy stunned the hillside psalmist into theology.

David sees the majesty of God in all of creation, not just the heavens, the moon and the stars, but also in the sheep and oxen, the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens and the fish of the sea.

God's accuracy may be observed in the hatching of eggs. For example:

the eggs of the potato bug hatch in 7 days; those of the canary in 14 days; those of the barnyard hen in 21 days; The eggs of ducks and geese hatch in 28 days; those of the mallard in 35 days; The eggs of the parrot and the ostrich hatch in 42 days. (Notice, they are all divisible by seven, the number of days in a week!)

God's wisdom is seen in the making of an elephant. The four legs of this great beast all bend forward in the same direction. No other quadruped is so made. God planned that this animal would have a huge body, too large to live on two legs. For this reason He gave it four fulcrums so that it can rise from the ground easily. The horse rises from the ground on its two front legs first. A cow rises from the ground with its two hind legs first. How wise the Lord is in all His works of creation!

God's wisdom is revealed in His arrangement of sections and segments, as well as in the number of grains. Each watermelon has an even number of stripes on the rind. Each orange has an even number of segments. Each ear of corn has an even number of rows. Each stalk of wheat has an even number of grains. Every bunch of bananas has on its lowest row an even number of bananas, and each row decreases by one, so that one row has an even number and the next row an odd number. All grains are found in even numbers on the stalks, and the Lord specified thirty fold, sixty fold, and a hundredfold - all even numbers.

God has caused the flowers to blossom at certain specified times during the day, so that Linnaeus, the great botanist, once said that if he had a conservatory containing the right kind of soil, moisture and temperature, he could tell the time of day or night by the flowers that were open and those that were closed!

This psalm puts God in his place and us in ours. The text is like a reality sandwich. God is bigger than we can describe, and we just aren’t that big a deal in the grand scheme. In essence, we are significant insignificants. The fall into sin ruined the goodness God had given us and so we forfeited our divinely given authority over creation. We certainly find ourselves powerless and out of control when we consider the potential for natural disasters and death that we face each day.

We can’t even lay claim to highest place in the created order. We are a little lower than the heavenly beings. We need to remember that when we complain to God, lament our sense of God’s absence, demand to live our own way, don’t feel that emotional buzz during worship or feel as though our prayers are bouncing off the ceiling.

Everyone has that one junk drawer at home, you know, half graveyard and half storage unit of miscellaneous junk. If you rifle through it during the annual spring cleaning, you realize there are a lot of forgotten valuables in there, and you get them all back in order again.

Psalm 8 is like cleaning the junk drawer. Today, as we celebrate the Holy Trinity, we do so properly when we put things back in their proper order — first God, then us — and when we remember how valuable everything in creation is. No, we don’t have the highest place in the created order, yet we are crowned with glory and honor.

The words of Philippians 2 describe the glory and status that the Son of God gave up to become one of us, to suffer and die for us. How Jesus made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, and how he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

To show us that he was satisfied with Christ’s sacrifice on our behalf, God the Father raised him from the dead, the first of all who will by grace through faith rise again to everlasting life.

Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth.

May we each be filled with the theology and emotion of David as we consider the greatness of God and what He has done for us. May the Holy Spirit empower us to stare at the heavens and say:

Thank you for the artwork of the cosmos! Thank you for caring for me! Thank you for creating me, for dying for me and for giving me the gift of faith, O Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Thank you for giving me value and purpose! Thank you for giving me a role in praising and serving you! O Sovereign Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! Amen!