sunrise to sunset

I sometimes get haunted by Psalm 113:3:

From the rising of the sun to its setting the LORD's name will be praised.

Have you ever been out in the wild, away from town, at sunrise?   It's a certainty that the writer of this Psalm had, many many times.    Sunset too.

With sunrise, earth's creatures all seem to come alive and sing and stir.    A few minutes before, they're all asleep.    A few minutes after, they're settling into the business of the day.    But for a little time, they just sing their song, each creature in its own way.

It's so universal that scientists and researchers have a name for it, so unexpectedly poetic that I gasped a little the first time I heard the technical term:  The "Dawn Chorus."    You'll read a dry academic article about the ecological interrelations of the Lower So-and-So Valley, and the article will use this lovely, redolent term —— the Dawn Chorus.

Here's the thing:  the Psalmist could never have known the truth about what he was saying here, but of course the earth is really a spinning ball.    When sunrise is happening right now, just a few miles east it's already day and down to business.    Just a few miles west and it's still night.

So, as the earth spins, there's a constant sunrise skimming across the globe, and a constant sunset on the other side.    And, more completely than the Psalmist could ever know, the great Dawn Chorus and the great Dusk Chorus are constantly rising up to the Creator who spun it all.    They've been going on, unbroken, since it all began.    Tied to the passing of day and night, it's also just about the closest thing we can get to the eternal.