Excerpted from The Language of Rivers and Stars: How Nature Speaks of the Glories of God by Seth Lewis. ©2025 Seth Lewis. Used by permission of The Good Book Company.

Once upon a time, you were born into a world of wonders. After that, everything was a discovery. You discovered your hands and learned how to use them. You discovered your legs and learned how to walk. You discovered your tongue and learned how to move it in the right ways to imitate the sounds you heard from the people around you so that you could express meaning in ways that they would understand. And by using your hands and your feet and your eyes and ears and mouth and nose—whatever senses and abilities you’ve been given, however sharp, however limited—you also began to discover the world that God put you in. You are a human.

Out of all the incredible works that God made in the universe, and out of all the billions of living beings he filled the earth with, humanity is in the unique position of being able to hear, understand, and respond to the voice of God in the two languages he has spoken through. We see his world, and in our hearts and minds we are moved like no other creature on Earth—we are moved by the voice of God. We read his word, and the small squiggles of ink on its pages communicate truth and beauty and love and justice and salvation to our souls. Even if you only know one human language, you are still, in this sense, bilingual. You are equipped to hear and respond to God’s voice in both his word and his world.

It doesn’t matter that you might be the most unknown, unnoticed person on Earth; the fact that God specifically designed you to hear and understand him and equipped you to respond to him—and the further fact that he went to such great pains to communicate with you through two different languages—means that, at the very least, you must be incredibly significant. There’s no other possible conclusion. The Creator of everything designed you uniquely to know him and to be known by him.

Interpreting Ourselves

Humans are the strangest hybrid to ever exist, in myth or reality. We are part spirit and part creature. A griffin makes more sense—part eagle and part lion. At least those are both animals. What are we? There’s no denying that we are like the animals, with animal-like weaknesses and animal-like urges and animal-like functions. As Solomon put it, “As for humans, God tests them so that they may see that they are like the animals. Surely the fate of human beings is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: as one dies, so dies the other” (Ecclesiastes 3:18-19). We are born like animals, we eat and drink and sleep like animals, and we live and die like animals. Except not quite. For if we are only animals, then we’re the oddest animals that ever lived.

Animals follow instinct. A cheetah lives and survives quite well, but it never pauses to feel remorse for killing another animal’s child. A female praying mantis never takes time to think through the moral implications of eating her partner. She just eats him and moves on. Only humans have these moral dilemmas. Only humans have a voice inside us that competes with the call of natural instinct and tells us when the things we want to do are, or are not, what we really ought to do. That voice, which we call conscience, calls us to live our lives and make our choices with a greater purpose than merely following our immediate desires as the animals do (Romans 2:15). Without this moral sensitivity, our concepts of good and evil, justice and mercy and forgiveness would not exist. Heroes would not exist or villains either. Courage would be impossible. All our best stories and all our noblest actions would be nothing but meaningless nonsense.

We are more than animals. There is a deeper dimension to who we are. There is a reality inside of us that is too intangible to find with a scalpel, yet too powerful to ignore. It shapes our thoughts, our dreams, our sense of justice and purpose, our awareness of beauty, our love and our actions. We were made in the image of God. We were given not only a body but a spirit (Job 32:8). With this gift, God enabled us not only to see and experience the stimuli of the natural world around us (like all creatures do) but also to hear the meaning he communicates through it—to feel the earth quaking with the thunder of God and recognise not only the power but the voice (Psalm 29). With this gift, God enabled us to say something in reply.

Does it make sense now that God gave humans responsibility over his creation? What other creature could represent his justice? What other creature could represent his compassion for all that he has made? What other creature would even notice these things?

Humanity has the privilege of expressing God’s character on Earth, and we are uniquely equipped to do so. We alone can hear his language, relate to him personally, learn his character and demonstrate it to the rest of his creation. But there’s more. The representation can go both ways—not only can we express the glory of God to his creation; we can also express the glorifying praises of creation to our God.

Responding to the One Who Made Us

Psalm 98:8 calls rivers and mountains to praise the Lord: “Let the rivers clap their hands, let the mountains sing together for joy”. Isaiah 55:12 says the trees will join in as well, and Psalm 148 adds many more creations to the list—but remember: even though these wonders “pour forth speech” constantly, they “use no words” (Psalm 19:3). While their very existence speaks loudly of the glory of God, there is only one part of creation that can put that declaration into words. It is us. If all of creation is the orchestra of praise, then we are the choir. We are the tongue, the voice of all things, the directors of music, the soloists and singers, the poets and scribes. When we bring our worship to the God of all things, we give vocal expression to the silent language that all things are constantly communicating anyway. In that sense, we are not only speaking for ourselves—we are speaking for an entire universe of wonders. It is a universe that expands far beyond us, and our praise should expand with it.

The orchestra has already begun to play. Are we providing the lyrics? You don’t need a fantastic singing voice to join the choir of creation. You can do it right now by simply speaking your thanks and appreciation to God—or at any other moment of any day. There is never an instant, ever, when worship is out of place. As humans, we have the joy of being able to know God and respond personally to him. And what words could we use to respond to a God like this, except words of worship? “Day after day” let us “pour forth speech” (v 2), joining the words of our praise to the constant music of God’s creation. “Night after night” let us “reveal knowledge” (v 2) of his character in how we relate to the rest of his created wonders. What a privilege it is to be human.