Streams from the Heavens (Psalm 8)

November 20, 2025 By Stanton Lanier Leave a Comment

As we take this cinematic journey through Psalms together, I encourage you to listen to the album and each song on your favorite music streaming service first, for pure enjoyment and also to see how God may speak to you through the music. If you want to go deeper Psalm 8 is down below. You can also read and reflect on the spiritual and musical inspirations behind each song while you listen or in silence as a quiet devotional. Wishing you God’s grace and peace, Stanton

Track two on the Eternal Beauty album is all about God’s Glory. Verse 1 reads, “Yahweh, our Sovereign God, your glory streams from the heavens above, filling the earth with the majesty of your name!” This song demanded a huge and triumphant main theme as a testament to the magnitude of God’s glory and majesty.

The solo trumpet introduction is a reference to the “trumpet of heaven” which is mentioned several times in the Bible, including New Testament names loud trumpet, last trumpet, trumpet of God, and seven trumpets. The solo trumpet calls us to attention and its melody references the main theme we will soon hear throughout the piece.

The choir, harp, strings, organ, and woodwinds all sing together with long notes and a majestic melody to continue part two of the introduction. These sounds all have a sense of wonder, awe, and worship of God as the prelude to a glorious voyage. He is God of the universe, God of the cosmos, and worthy of our worship. “Look at the splendor of your skies, your creative genius glowing in the heavens. When I gaze at your moon and your stars, mounted like jewels in their settings, I know you are the fascinating artist who fashioned it all!” (verse 3).

At 1:30 in the song there is a secondary theme verse which repeats before the main theme appears. This secondary theme is singing the words “streams from the heavens” with notes that become a set up melody for the main theme melody. About thirty seconds later the main theme is finally introduced in its majesty with piano and orchestra. It is repeated once here and begins to build. I wanted to create a desire to hear this played again soon, even multiple times, to take it in fully over and over. The main theme pauses at the 2:31 mark, and the secondary theme verse appears a second time with new variations in instruments and percussion rhythms. This thirty second time window opens up the song, and increases the energy and anticipation for the main theme chorus to return soon.

At 3:00 the main theme reappears and is now bigger in instrumentation. Then it repeats a second time and is even bigger, and a third that is still bigger. The fourth and final presentation is the biggest of all. Each one of these four playings stretches out the song to get lost in the moment, for it to seem longer and grander with each listening. The trumpet from the introduction appears and grows to its full glory in the final repeat. As I experimented with endings, it was fitting to let the chorus carry the day to the finish, for God’s glory and majesty to be at the forefront as the song sends us on our way. I pray this track lifts your spirit and encourages you that you are seen and loved by your heavenly Father who is full of glory and majesty… “from the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise.” (Psalm 8:2, NIV).

How does Streams from the Heavens speak to you?

Psalm 8 (Passion) — STREAMS FROM THE HEAVENS

God’s Splendor, For the Pure and Shining One Set to the melody of “For the Feast of Harvest” by King David

God’s Majesty

1 Yahweh, our Sovereign God, your glory streams from the heavens above, filling the earth with the majesty of your name! 2 You have built a stronghold by the songs of children. Strength rises up with the chorus of infants. This kind of praise has power to shut Satan’s mouth. Childlike worship will silence the madness of those who oppose you.

Human Dignity

3 Look at the splendor of your skies, your creative genius glowing in the heavens. When I gaze at your moon and your stars, mounted like jewels in their settings, I know you are the fascinating artist who fashioned it all! 4 Why would you bother with puny, mortal man or care about human beings? 5 Yet what honor you have given to men, created only a little lower than Elohim, crowned with glory and magnificence. 6 You have delegated to them rulership over all you have made, with everything under their authority, placing earth itself under the feet of your image-bearers. 7-8 All the created order and every living thing of the earth, sky, and sea — the wildest beasts and all that move in the paths of the sea — everything is in submission to Adam’s sons. 9 Yahweh, our Sovereign God, your glory streams from the heavens above, filling the earth with the majesty of your name! People everywhere see your splendor!

Humpback Whales Echoing Brilliance

March 31, 2014 By Stanton Lanier Leave a Comment

When is the last time you saw something brilliant?

What does this have to do with humpback whales? The connection was a “brilliant” experience for me. In high school and college years I worked several summers at Adventures Unlimited, the largest canoe rental in the Florida panhandle. In recent years they built one of the top zip line tours in the southeast through pine forests and along the Coldwater River. Jack, the owner, and my boss, taught me and all his employees the value of hard work and customer service. He also made sure we laughed and had fun in the process. He was, and still is, a great leader and visionary on a person-to-person basis, with creating unique outdoor adventures, and with preserving natural beauty. He is also a lifelong friend.

I got to see Jack last December when he and a friend attended one of my concerts in the area. My performance included Singing in the Ocean Deeps from the album Open Spaces. Afterward his friend said, “I have a friend in Tonga, in the South Pacific, who is a world-class ocean videographer. Do you want me to see if he might want to combine his film with your music?” Below is the result…

Sometimes we see something brilliant, literally, like this amazing video of a mother humpback whale and her calf. Sometimes we “see”something brilliant when we take notice that something good wasn’t just a coincidence. Like what may happen through a friend. Sometimes we can sense that God was the author of “brilliant” as expressed in Psalm 8 (The Message)…

“God, brilliant Lord, yours is a household name. Nursing infants gurgle choruses about you; toddlers shout the songs that drown out enemy talk, and silence atheist babble. I look up at your macro-skies, dark and enormous, your handmade sky-jewelry, moon and stars mounted in their settings. Then I look at my micro-self and wonder, why do you bother with us? Why take a second look our way? Yet we’ve so narrowly missed being gods, bright with Eden’s dawn light. You put us in charge of your handcrafted world, repeated to us your Genesis-charge, made us lords of sheep and cattle, even animals out in the wild, birds flying and fish swimming, whales singing in the ocean deeps. God, brilliant Lord, your name echoes around the world.”

This is the passage that birthed Singing in the Ocean Deeps. God was brilliant as the inspiration came, as the piano keys began to sound like the ocean, and as the French horn was added in the recording studio to symbolize whales singing.

What is an experience that echoed “God, brilliant Lord” in your story?

Singing in the Ocean Deeps

October 29, 2013 By Stanton Lanier 4 Comments

You can listen to Singing in the Ocean Deeps from the new album Open Spaces at stantonlanier.com, iTunes, Amazon MP3 and many other outlets. I can remember visiting Myrtle Beach, South Carolina as a young boy growing up in North Carolina. There were no condos or tall buildings on the beach. It was just sand and camp grounds. That was my first time to hear the ocean waves. The sights and sounds of beach and ocean invited me into their wonder and adventure through the whispers of gentle breeze. Then we moved to the Florida panhandle just before my eleventh birthday, and I was introduced to another new world — the Gulf of Mexico, with the finest white sands, sea oats swaying, and gorgeous shades of blue and green waters, sending smaller waves on shore than the Atlantic. Little did I know that Psalm 8, which entered my life about twenty years ago (and happened to be twenty years after those boyhood memories), would tie together the wonder and mystery of the ocean with a piano melody expressing the marvelous ocean deeps, with its whales symbolized by French horn (my new friend Richard “Gus” Sebring, Principal French Horn for the Boston Pops Orchestra joins me on the recording, as piano and horn dance like oceans and whales). Psalm 8 (NIV) opens “Oh Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth.” Then, a little ways down, in the words of The Message Bible…”You put us in charge of your handcrafted world, repeated to us your Genesis-charge, Made us lords of sheep and cattle, even animals out in the wild, Birds flying and fish swimming, whales singing in the ocean deeps. God, brilliant Lord, your name echoes around the world.” What is your favorite ocean animal which symbolizes peace, rest, and beauty to you? Think about this as you view this new music video. Enjoy!