“He heals the broken in heart, and binds up their wounds. He tells the number of the stars; He calls them all by their names” (Psalm 147:3-4).
What a very striking contrast! The “HE,” who tenderly ministers to the broken in heart, and binds up their wounds, is the “HE,” who tells the number of the stars, and calls them by their names.
Judged from the standpoint of us, mortals, it seems the most vivid and staggering contrast between the immensely great and the minutely small. When we think of the stars we are left in wonder for they are beyond comprehension. The ancients counted the stars they saw by the naked eye, and thought they were able, more or less, to number them. But the telescope and stellar photography have added immensely to the number that can be seen. They run into uncountable millions. The Milky-Way, a broad luminous zone in the sky, is produced by the light of millions of fixed stars. And it seems that man has only touched the veritable fringe of the mighty universe, which is beyond the grasp of his puny mind.
Take our sun, the centre of the solar system. It is no less than 1,300,000 times greater in bulk than this little planet called the earth. And yet this immense sun is small compared with millions, which we call stars. So astronomers tell us. So has God made them.
We are told that “sprang there even of one [Abraham], and him as good as dead, so many as the stars of the sky in multitude, and as the sand which is by the sea shore innumerable” (Heb. 11:12). This verse conveys a sense of immensity, impossible for our small minds to grasp. Christians, believing in the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures, receive this, wonderful as it is; as true. It needs no support of men to prove it, but it is interesting that not long ago a great astronomer testified to the scientific truth of it, as known by investigation of the sky by the aid of stellar photography.
It is very significant that our psalm tells how God heals the broken in heart, and binds up their wounds, before we are told that the same God tells the number of the stars, and calls them by their names. What do we glean from this order? We gather how intensely God cares for the sorrows and sadness of mankind.
We approach a broken down tenement in a slum. We ascend the creaky stairs, and enter a room. It contains but a bed, a chair, and a handful of odds and ends. There lies on the bed a sinner, who is paying in his poor broken body the penalty of a sinful life. He is down and out. In the mercy of God he has at last awakened to the fact that he is a sinner. As he looks back upon his shameful life he is broken-hearted and in despair. He knows not where to turn for relief to a guilty conscience. He hears the wondrous story. That in order to forgive him his many sins it was necessary that the “HE,” who tells the number of the stars, and calls them by name; even the mighty Creator of them and their Sustainer, should become a Man upon this earth, and die an atoning death on Calvary’s cross in order that his broken heart might be healed, and his wounds bound up. What a story that HE, who is the Creator of the universe, should condescend to enter that humble room in the dingy garret of a slum, and there illuminate the mind and soul of this wreck of society, save him, bless him, and make him a wondrous trophy of redeeming love.
Or it may be a sick saint. Sorrow after sorrow has fallen upon him. Sick in body and mind, and yet here again the Great Healer enters, and ministers heavenly cordial, raises the drooping spirit, fills the empty heart with heavenly joy. Have we not seen this hundreds of times? When we felt tongue-tied in the presence of want and sorrow, often have we been rebuked as we saw how such were sustained, not only sustained, but “more than conquerors through Him that loved us” (Rom. 8:37).