As a worship leader flipping through the song book week after week to get ready for Sunday morning, I am amazed at the vast array of songs we don’t know. Occasionally one will catch my eye, and I will do a quick search on YouTube to learn it.

That happened to me today. I came across song #93 in Songs of Faith and Praise. The tune was composed in the early 1800s and the lyrics were written in the mid-1960s.

It’s called “God, Who Stretched the Spangled Heavens.” Not the catchiest title, but check out the lyrics:

God, who stretched the spangled heavens
Infinite in time and place
Flung the suns in burning radiance
Thru the silent fields of space
We, Your children, in Your likeness
Share inventive powers with You
Great Creator, still creating
Show us what we yet may do
We have conquered worlds undreamed of
Since the childhood of our race
Known the ecstasy of winging
Thru uncharted realms of space
Probed the secrets of the atom
Wielding unimagined power
Facing us with life’s destruction
Or our most triumphant hour
As each far horizon beckons
May it challenge us anew
Children of creative purpose
Serving others, honoring You
May our dreams prove rich with promise
Each endeavor well begun
Great Creator, give us guidance
Till our goals and Yours are one

I wish we knew this song! I think I will try to teach it sometime soon. How cool would it be to sing in church about space travel and atom splitting?

But not only that. I think this song points out a fact that we don’t really acknowledge a lot. Humanity was created to share in the creative process. That’s why God gave us the cognitive skills to rule, subdue, and fill the earth. That’s why he allowed us to name and categorize the animals. He entrusted us with the power to create, to explore, to discover, to enjoy, to advance.

The debate between science and faith is not going away any time soon, as far as I can tell. As God’s children, we should not think that any scientific discovery could somehow “disprove” God. If we think the universe is too mysterious, too complex, too vast for it to be created by God, then our idea God is too small.

The author of this song also points out that our scientific and technological advancements have the potential for either great evil or great good, to heal or to kill, to create or destroy.

Read these lyrics again. Let the message really soak in deep. With this song in mind, go back and read Genesis 1-4.

And let us all pray that God will be the one to guide us in our scientific and technological advancements, that He will lead us as we join in the creative process with Him until our goals and His are one.