The Parade of Opinions – Psalm 8

David didn’t Google.
No TikTok prophets, no expert panels—
only a sky that hadn’t learned to sell itself,
only darkness doing honest work
so the lights could speak.

“A time is coming…”
St Anthony’s warning drifts through my century
when madness becomes normal
and the not-mad are called mad.

Who am I?
What is my place in the world?

Before that, another question
like bedrock under the sand:
Who do I belong to?

Because identity is complicated business
when you’re a speck of dust
with lungs full of borrowed air,
a fleeting shadow
trying to name itself.

YHWH—
the One whose glory reaches out,
who crosses distance without effort:
Alpha Centauri, 4.37 light years,
trillions of galaxies—
and still, somehow, close.

Sometimes I wonder
what David would say
if he could see through Hubble—
if the ancient song would catch in his throat,
if awe would become louder,
or quieter,
or both.

And the question returns, stubborn and tender:
What is man,
that you are mindful of him?

Mindful—
not a passing glance,
not a distracted nod,
but “constantly call to mind.”
Really?
Does God think about us all the time?

Some days it’s hard to believe
I am on his mind.
Hard to trust the unseen attention
when the world rewards noise
and measures worth in metrics.

David stands on a hill,
cityscape spread out like an argument.
Walls.
Seven mountains.
Command and control.
And still no lasting peace.

That is the ache in the psalm—
the world placed under our hands
and yet slipping through them.

We are crowned with glory and honour,
and also frightened.
We were given dominion
and still can’t deliver peace,
so God delivers it himself.

Jesus crossed the vastness of our cosmos
to enter our neighbourhood.
He became a baby—
small enough to be held,
dependent enough to be fed,
vulnerable enough to be harmed.

He died on a cross,
not as a glitch in the plan
but as the plan’s strange heart—
and God raised him,
placed everything under his feet,
until every tongue confesses
what the sky has been saying all along:
He is Lord.

And somewhere in that confession
my frantic self-naming loosens.

Grace has thrown the door wide open—
everyone welcome—
and the way in has a name.

So I look up again,
past the parade of opinions,
past the certainty that isn’t so,
past the madness that calls itself normal.

I find my place
where the lights have always been,
where glory keeps reaching,
where the Lord keeps calling to mind
even specks of dust.

And my question—Who am I?—
is answered, slowly,
by a deeper one:
Whose am I?

And the night,
without shouting,
teaches me to say it:

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

Original message by Sean Tan, The Bridge Church Macquarie Park NSW
18 January 2026