Mark Twain tells a story about a man who went to heaven from California. Arriving at the pearly gates he was asked where he'd come from. He tells them proudly, 'From California'. But nobody knows where California is. 'It's in the United States', declares the new arrival with amazement. But nobody knows where the United States is. 'It's in North America!' he exclaims. But nobody knows where North America is. 'It's a part of the earth', he continues with growing indignation. But nobody knows where the earth is. At last some of the wise scholars, after a long search, find that the earth is a little forgotten speck, flung out into space, that was once known as 'The Wart'.

Who am I? Am I important to anyone - around? out there? up there? 'What is man?' the philosophers have asked for centuries. David, the Psalmist, asks the same question, twice (Ps 8, 144).

It's a good question, according to Alexander Pope: 'Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; the proper study of mankind is man.'

Psalm 8 is one of five 'nature Psalms'. (The others: 19, 29, 65, 104). It's 'Genesis 1 set to music'. And it answers our questions four ways.

1. I am a person who can praise the Lord (8:1, 2, 9)

The Psalm opens and closes with the same words: 'O Lord, our Lord, your greatness is seen in all the world.' The thoughts between are the proofs of these two praise-statements.

His first word for 'Lord' is the same as that by which God revealed Himself to Moses at the burning bush. The second has the Hebrew meaning 'master' or 'sovereign'. The double address emphasises the strong feeling of the speaker.

Children and babies offer perfect praise to God, says the Psalmist (and Jesus - Matt 21:16), and, in a way not clear in our text, such praise is a bulwark against the evil of corrupt men. God has a way of using weak things to confound the mighty. Think of Israel's greatest emancipator - floating in an ark among the Nile bulrushes. Or David, with his boyhood sling. Or the Saviour of the world, wrapped in a cloth and lying in an animal's manger.

Oliver Cromwell, as he neared the end of his memorable life, asked his weeping friends, 'Is there no one here who will praise the Lord?'

Five well-known words are associated etymologically with 'praise': price, appraise, appreciate, prize, precious. And there are five ideas behind the Hebrew Old Testament words for 'praise' - to kneel, to make to shine or celebrate aloud (the word 'alleluia' - to make Yahweh to shine, to celebrate His name aloud), to sing a musical composition, to confess aloud, and to commend. So we can say that to praise the Lord is 'to appreciate Him, either in words, or songs, or attitudes'. Praise is concerned with who He is, 'thanksgiving' with what He does. A good way to praise God is to think about His character, expressed in the various names by which He is known in Scripture. 'Servants of God, in joyful ways, Sing the Lord Jehovah's praise; His glorious Name let all adore, From age to age, for evermore. Blest be that Name, supremely blest, From the sun's rising to its rest; above the heavens, His power is known, Through all the earth His goodness shown. O then, aloud, in joyful lays, Sing the Lord Jehovah's praise; His saving Name let all adore, From age to age, for evermore!'

It's a good thing to praise the Lord! Billy Graham does it every morning by reading five Psalms. Why not read the Psalms, beginning at Psalm 1, and underline everything you can praise God for? It will do you good, as Philip Melancthon suggested to Martin Luther when he found him depressed: 'Come, Martin, let us sing a Psalm and spite the Devil!'

'Your praise', says one translation, 'is rehearsed above the heavens!'

2. I am a creature, in awe of the mighty creator (8:3)

Our best-known creed describes God as the Maker of heaven and earth. The Bible, a theological text-book and not a scientific one, does not tell us how God made everything, but that He did - and why He did. And the Psalmist here is descriptive, not explanatory. When David's sheep were bedded down for the night, he'd lean back onto a rock and look up to the heavens, and think about His God. I wonder what he'd think if he knew there were thousands of millions of galaxies out there, with each galaxy a swarm of thousands of millions of stars? If on a moonless night he could see a cloud of pale light in the constellation Andromeda, how would he react if he were told that this cloud is one of the outer glaxies, and it's appearing to us as it was two million years ago? And what about 'quasars' - 10 billion or more light-years away, and radiating more energy than 100 galaxies!

An old New England preacher who'd caught the spirit of the 8th Psalm used to preach once a year about the latest discoveries in astronomy. When someone asked what use such a sermon could be he replied, 'None at all, but it greatly enlarges my idea of God'.

The Psalmist lived closer to the glories of creation than we do in our city-strangled existence. As human beings stand alone under the night-sky, their emotions have been mixed. George Sand spoke of 'the cold look of the stars which seem to say, You are only vanity, grains of sand. Tomorrow you will not be, and we shall not know.' 'The silence of those infinite spaces terrifies me,' confessed Blaise Pascal. Such 'astronomical intimidation' can cause us to feel overwhelmingly insignificant.

But for the Psalmist, the heavens enlarged not only his idea of God, but also his idea of man. As Immanuel Kant put it: 'Two things fill the mind with wonder and reverence: the star-lit heavens above me, and the moral law within me.' Which brings us to the next point:

3. I am part of God's special creation - cared for by God and inferior only to Him!

I am God's special concern! (8:4) He not only created all those glittering galaxies with a word, but he cares about every one of his human creatures - and even sparrows! He is more concerned about worth than about size. The old translations tell us that God 'visits' us, which He has specially done in Jesus Christ. He is 'Emmanuel .... God with us' - God beside us, among us and for us.

But there's more: I am God's highest creation! (8:5) Man is not just a 'naked (or trousered) ape'. Man is not just a complex biological machine, an accidental arrangement of molecules, 'a chance configuration of atoms in the slip-stream of meaningless history'.

The biochemists tell us that the chemical components of your body are now worth about $10! Nutritionists tell us 'Man is what he eats!' 'Man is a political animal' said Aristotle, 'a religious animal' according to Edmund Burke, 'a sexual animal' (Freud), 'a tool-using animal' (Carlyle), 'a cooking animal' (Boswell).

Man, says the Bible, is the apex - the crowning act - God's creation. He's a little lower than the 'Elohim' - the gods, divine beings, angels. Because the contrast is between God in His greatness and man in his smallness (see Gen 1:26, 27) 'God' is the best rendering.

This ancient poet believed that man was created in God's image - he differs from other creatures not only in degree but in kind. He is more like God than anything else is. He has a 'spiritual personality' - with reason, intelligence, an appreciation of beauty, an ability to choose what is right, and he is granted the freedom to choose what he will become.

4. I am God's deputy - His viceroy - over the rest of creation (8:6-8)

Man is the steward or care-taker, of God's creation. He can utilise the plant and animal worlds for his survival.

Some ecologists tell us that the Judeo-Christian tradition is mostly responsible for man's exploitation of nature. Western man, Paul Ehrlich tells us, dominates nature rather than living in harmony with it. (Western news media told us about Hilary's 'conquering' Everest. An Indian paper's headline: 'Man befriends Everest').

But this is to misread the Bible. We are responsible to God for the way we use His good gifts. Man's dominion is not absolute - it's always 'My Father's World'. A close study of the Old Testament, for example, will reveal many regulations for conserving resources. Man is given the authority to use, but never to misuse, the components of his environment. Further, man is accountable for his dominion over the intellectual world. All branches of knowledge are actually branches of theology.

Man's problem is that he's 'fallen', a rebel against God. He is greedy, and the love of money becomes a root of all kinds of evil (1 Tim 6:10). He is apathetic, and doesn't do for others what he ought to do. (The film 'The China Syndrome' depicts graphically what happens when these destructive forces are operative in a nuclear power plant).

'Creation', according to Simone Weil's famous dictum, 'was the moment when God ceased to be everything so we humans could become something'. But the impulse to arrogance - to do exactly as we please - or to apathy (to do absolutely nothing at all), is within all of us. The temptations are to be either too much or too little.

God has done something really wonderful about this dilemma. He sent His son, as a Man, to be our Saviour. And God crowned Him with glory and honour (Heb 2:7-9) and in so doing gave a royal status to all who are 'in Him'. The God of infinite space now chooses to invite Himself into my life, and humbly asks for room to live and reign. He who made space for you in His creation now asks you - gently - to make space in your life for Him. So you can now 'think big' about yourself: in relating to Christ your dignity now, and your glorious destiny forever is certain!