Why are there 5,000 known species of sponges on the ocean floor, and more than 300,000 species of beetles? Because each one reveals something more of the brilliant creativity of their Maker. Psalm 104 helps us to rejoice in the “manifold” diversity of God’s works, the “creatures innumerable” which exist on this planet. Our world is full of an amazing variety of flowers, trees, birds, and animals. Since all has been designed according to God’s “wisdom,” we are invited not just to marvel at it, but to explore and study it too. God’s praises should be expressed not only by the artist, but also the scientist (v 24-26). Having made all these creatures in His wisdom, He also cares for them in His faithfulness. “These all look to You, to give them their food in due season.” Neither animals nor humans are inactive in feeding themselves. They “gather it up,” but it is God who gives it to them. Like a child at the zoo or farmyard, God opens His outstretched hand to satisfy all His creatures with good things. And this is why we pause to offer Him our thanks before every meal (v 27-28). Our creaturely dependence is further emphasized when the psalmist asserts that our very breath is in the Creator’s hand. If God should hide His face and withhold our breath for even a moment, we would die and return to dust. In successive verses the same Hebrew word is translated “breath” and “spirit.” By this we are reminded that everything about us is utterly dependent upon the Spirit of the LORD. By God’s breath, Adam became a living being, and so it is also proper for us to sing to Him, “It’s Your breath in our lungs, so we pour out praise to You only.” Forward into the New Testament and we find Jesus teaching that we must be born of the Spirit in order to enter the kingdom of God. Without God we perish, both physically and spiritually (v 29-30). As the psalm nears its conclusion, the writer expresses his fervent wish that God’s glory would always endure through His works, and that God Himself would continue to rejoice in those works, even as He did at the beginning of creation (v 31-32). For his part, the psalmist vows to spend his whole life praising God; and he hopes that this psalm, his own joyful “meditation” upon the works of God, may be pleasing in the LORD’s eyes (v 33-34). At the same time, he is mindful of “sinners” and “wicked” people who do not give glory to the Creator who gave them life and daily preserves them. Biblical writers longed for a harmonious universe and knew human rebellion was the obstacle which had to be dealt with. Praise the LORD: God’s own Son came once to die for sinners, and He will come again to judge the unbelieving (v 35). For further meditation: