This week at the White House’s state dinner, President Obama toated India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh with a well-chosen Indian proverb:

The most beautiful things in the universe

are the starry heavens above us

and the feeling of duty within us.

There is profound truth here. God put his beauty and majesty in the skies to awe us, to help us see our place in the bigger picture, and to draw us to him. As Psalm 19 says, “The heavens declare the glory of God.”

God also made us humans with a sense of duty, implying undying values, right and wrong, and a sense of morality and conscience deep within us. As Genesis 1 says, “Male and female he created them. . .in the image of God he created them.”

For these universal truths that God has made known to all peoples and cultures, let us give thanks.