Author: John Stonestreet and Timothy D. Padgett
Early this week, three Americans and one Canadian travelled further from home than anyone else in human history. At a maximum distance of over 252,000 miles, the Artemis mission broke the record previously set by the doomed Apollo 13 mission in 1970.
Prior to a space launch like this, most of the discussion has to do with engineering. Will we be able to pull it off? What kind of precision is required? However, in space, the conversation shifts from human capacity to awe.
Asked to reflect on it all, Artemis astronaut Victor Glover saw not the vast emptiness of space but the wonder of our place in it, and what that must imply. Prompted for an impromptu Easter sermon, Glover said:
I'm trying to tell you, just trust me, you are special. In all of this emptiness, this is a whole bunch of nothing, this thing we call the universe, you have this oasis, this beautiful place that we get to exist together. I think as we go into Easter Sunday thinking about … all the cultures all around the world, whether you celebrate it or not, whether you believe in God or not, … this is an opportunity for us to remember where we are, who we are, and that we are the same thing and that we got to get through this together.
Later, as the crew was about to leave the reach of communication with Earth on the far side of the moon, Glover said:
As we get close to the nearest point to the moon and the farthest point from Earth—as we continue to unlock the mysteries of the cosmos—I would like to remind you of one of the most important mysteries there on Earth, and that’s love. … Christ said, in response to what was the greatest command, that it was to love God with all that you are. … And he also, being a great teacher, said the second is equal to it, and that is to love your neighbor as you love yourself.
This is not the first time a portion of the Gospel has been proclaimed from space. On Christmas Eve in 1968, the crew of Apollo 8, the first to circle the moon, famously said to the world, “For all the people back on Earth, the crew of Apollo 8 has a message that we would like to send to you: ‘In the beginning, God created the Heaven and the Earth . . .’”
Despite the snarky statement from the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin, that he had not seen God up there, the precedent is now established. When elite scientists and space travelers are given the view so few get to see, they tend to point to Revealed Truth, to God, and to how special His image bearers are to Him.
In a way, many on Earth share the experience. The rockets are really cool, but people tear up at the bigness of it all. The sheer emptiness that surrounds our “pale blue dot” leaves us humbled like Glover and pondering like the Psalmist, asking,
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands.
John Piper once said, “Standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon and contemplating your own greatness is pathological.” Indeed, but for Glover, floating on the edge of space led to contemplating our specialness. Not out of conceit or hubris, but out of awe: the appropriate response when one is confronted with the realities of a Creation that cries out about the glory of God.
After all, most of the universe is either, to quote the movie Contact, “an awful waste of space,” or it was designed with us in mind. The cosmos is so great, our lives are insignificant unless, unless, the God Who made the sun, moon, and stars knows us each by name.