Thou art the God that dost wonders. Thou hast made thy power known among the nations: (Psalm 76:15 DR)
When we think about God’s power and might, we tend to let our minds ponder the flashy things. And to be fair, there is no lack of material n the Scriptures that might qualify as this. Miracle, wonders; all of these are fodder for the intellect to ruminate upon.
However good these things may be to think about, they can also be a distraction, and if we are not careful can lead us away from the One they are meant to to point us to.
Our Lord himself dealt with this phenomenon, as crowds of people thronged him to get a glimpse of the miraculous. But he knew that many were there simply for the show:
Now when he was at Jerusalem, at the pasch, upon the festival day, many believed in his name, seeing his signs which he did. But Jesus did not trust himself unto them, for that he knew all men, And because he needed not that any should give testimony of man: for he knew what was in man. (John 2:23-25 DR)
These same crowds would soon shout for his crucifixion, which demonstrates how fickle the human heart can be, and no amount of the miraculous or the flashy or the wonderful will change that.
What does change the heart of man is the power of God at work in the soul, which can transform it from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light. St. Paul, who himself underwent such a conversion, writes to the Corinthians:
Know you not that the unjust shall not possess the kingdom of God? Do not err: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, Nor the effeminate, nor liers with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor railers, nor extortioners, shall possess the kingdom of God. And such some of you were; but you are washed, but you are sanctified, but you are justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Spirit of our God. (1 Corinthians 6:9-11 DR)
He reminds them that they once were like this in their hearts and actions, but through the sanctifying work of the Holy Ghost have been delivered from that bondage. While this doesn’t have the flashiness of external miracles, it is a miracle wrought in the soul which is far more remarkable than those we can see with our eyes.
The Psalmist gets at this in this verse, remarking that the Lord is the God that dost wonders. And while this translation does not explicitly have it, the implication is that God alone is the God that does wonders, in contrast to the idols of the nations or the works of men. The entire activity of the Blessed Trinity is wrapped up in all of God’s works, which the Psalmist gets a misty glance at:
How “alone?” Is it perchance the Father, and not the Son? Or the Son, and not the Father? Nay, but Father and Son and Holy Ghost. For it is not three Gods but one God that does wonderful things alone, and even in this very leaper-over. (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 76, 15.)
The transformation of the heart is thus the greatest act of God’s wonders, of which the external works are a foreshadowing:
You are indeed a great God, doing wonderful things in body, in soul; alone doing them. The deaf have heard, the blind have seen, the feeble have recovered, the dead have risen, the paralytic have been strengthened. But these miracles were at that time performed on bodies, let us see those wrought on the soul. Sober are those that were a little before drunken, believers are those that were a little before worshippers of idols: their goods they bestow on the poor that did rob before those of others. (ibid.)
The Psalmist will go on to describe God’s act in saving his people from bondage, which St. Paul notes as a historical act also bears an allegorical signification:
For I would not have you ignorant, brethren, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea. And all in Moses were baptized, in the cloud, and in the sea: And did all eat the same spiritual food, And all drank the same spiritual drink; (and they drank of the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ.) (1 Corinthians 10:1-4 DR)
The Psalmist thus encourages us to turn our minds to the highest things, to allow the wonders we see with our eyes to raise the eyes of faith to our Lord who works even greater acts within the soul:
“You have made known unto the people Your power.” Thence this congregation of Asaph leaping over; because He has made known in the peoples His virtue. What virtue of His has He made known in the peoples? “But we preach Christ crucified,...Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” [1 Corinthians 1:23] If then the virtue of God is Christ, He has made known Christ in the peoples. Do we not yet perceive so much as this; and are we so unwise, are we lying so much below, do we so leap over nothing, as that we see not this? (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 76, 15.)
For this animation I drew a quick power button in After Effects using shape layers and added some layer styling to the outer edge of the button to get that nice beveled edge look. I then added in various layers of glow to, well, make it glow, and then animated that on and off like an idling power button.
I used a blurred edge matte for the background and animated it to follow the intensity of the glow. I probably could have used expressions to drive this, but sometimes I’m just lazy it’s faster just to do it manually.
I typed in the text and applied an ellipse mask to the text layer and changed the text to follow the shape of the mask, thus getting the circular text path. I used the same reveal matte for this so that the text is only visible as the intensity of the light increases.
Enjoy.
Thou art the God that dost wonders. Thou hast made thy power known among the nations:
(Psalm 76:15 DR)
View a higher quality version of this gif here: