“When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers,
The moon and the stars, which You have ordained,
What is man that You are mindful of him,
And the son of man that You visit him?
For You have made him a little lower than the angels,
And You have crowned him with glory and honor. (Psalm 8:3–9 NKJV)

This is a beautiful and familiar Psalm. I offer a snippet from another translation (NRSV) to consider as well:

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars that you have established;
what are human beings that you are mindful of them,
mortals that you care for them?

Of course, the second translation is a typical example of the “inclusive language” that marks many contemporary efforts. “What is man” becomes “what are human beings.” For some, such changes can be quite jarring. More jarring to me, however, is the fact that both translations presume the Psalmist to be speaking in generic terms – that “man” is treated as a collective noun. I will suggest a different translation (corrected from the NKJV):

When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers,
The moon and the stars, which You have ordained,
What is a man that You are mindful of him,
Or a son of man that You visit him?

In this suggestion, we move from a collective noun, to a singular noun. The difficulty is that neither Greek nor Hebrew, in their classical forms, have an equivalent of the indefinite article, “a.” There are ways to say such a thing, but it is difficult and highly unusual.

I have been playing with this translation recently, as I have been engaging in a conversation regarding our life and experience as “particular” rather than “general.” I believe that there is no “general” experience of humanity and the moon and stars. There is only ever a man or a woman looking up and out. Indeed, the point of the Psalm is made even more poignant when we translate using the indefinite article (“a”).

There is, of course, a common human nature, shared by all human beings. However, that nature is never encountered apart from a single human being. When we speak about “human nature,” we are describing something that is common to us all, but only ever encountered in its single form. We do not see “natures.”

St. Theodore the Studite wrote in some detail about this problem in his classic work, On the Holy Icons. The iconoclasts whom he opposed argued against the making of icons saying that “it is impossible to depict the divine nature.” St. Theodore readily agreed, but noted that it is impossible to depict any nature. Rather, what is depicted is the hypostasis, the single instance. Icons are hypostatic – what is depicted is the person (hypostasis). He famously said that we can make an icon of Christ not because He became man, but because He became a man.

It is not unusual in our modern culture to see artistic efforts to depict abstractions. Mostly, they don’t look like anything.  There is no such thing as “human suffering” – such that I could make a painting of it. There are persons who suffer – and the suffering is unique and personal. There is no cancer in general – some individual has cancer and that is also part of its tragedy.

We live in a culture of statistics – and they hide a lot. They obscure us in the reduction of our lives to generalities. None of us is a percent. None of us is an aggregate. Each of us is a priceless treasure of whom God is mindful. You cannot count the hairs on the heads of humanity in general. But the hairs on the head of each of us is numbered . Sparrows do not fall to the ground in general. It is the single sparrow that God notes, and infinitely notes each sparrow, fallen and otherwise. This is the wonder of it all.

One of the great challenges in “considering” the heavens – or just your backyard – is that everything is in motion. The world is constantly changing, acting, choosing, reacting, consuming. St. Dionysius wrote in great detail regarding what is termed “natural contemplation” (theoria physike). By and large, he did not treat it as an exercise in thinking about the nature of things, though that is fair game. Rather, he looked primarily at the work of providence, God’s good will at work in and through all things.

Christ directs us to “consider” the “lillies of the field.”

“So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?” (Matt. 6:28–30)

Christ’s example turns our attention to God’s providence as well: “…will He not much more clothe you?”

And so, as I consider the heavens, the birds, the flowers, and everything else that swirls in constant motion about me – in a movement that is simply beyond comprehension – I see the hand of God at work in all things (“the work of His fingers”). And in the midst of it all is a man – me – the looker, the considerer – and I wonder what I am that God should consider me.

And He says, “You are mine.”