I have been completely, embarrassingly, magnificently captivated by the Artemis II mission - the closest human beings have ventured to the Moon since 1972.
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I am a middle-aged woman with a 9-5 job in Nagaland. I'm a mother too. I sit at a desk. I work. I drink too much pika chai. By no remarkable measure does the story of four astronauts hurtling 300,000 miles from Earth belong in my life.
And yet.
For the past several days, I have been completely, embarrassingly, magnificently captivated by the Artemis II mission - the closest human beings have ventured to the Moon since 1972. I have watched the live updates from space. I have studied and saved multiple photographs. I have replayed the post-landing speeches more times than I would care to admit, and this Sunday on the way to church, as I narrated the story to my family, I couldn’t help the tears welling up my eyes.
What business does an insignificant woman in a remote corner of the world have being this moved by something that happened thousands of miles away in the blackness of space?
As it turns out - all the business in the world.
Christina Koch, one of the four astronauts aboard Artemis II, described looking back at Earth and seeing it as "a lifeboat hanging undisturbingly in the universe." She barely got the words out before her voice broke. And the image they captured of our tiny, beautiful Earth from space hung before me and I couldn't help but wonder: the God who set galaxies spinning at distances our mind cannot fathom looked across everything He had made and chose this. This small, blue, revolving, improbable place. "The highest heavens belong to the Lord, but the earth He has given to mankind" (Psalm 115:16). He didn't scatter us randomly into the cosmos. He made this home for us deliberately. Seven times in Genesis, He stepped back and called it good. Good. This earth is not an accident. It is a gift.
And then, most staggeringly of all - He came here Himself. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14). Not among the stars. Not in the vast and gorgeous emptiness that the astronauts glimpsed from 300,000 miles away. Among us. On this dot. On this lifeboat.
I have never felt so inextricably connected to my Creator, or so aware of the inescapable fact that I am part of a humanity, all journeying together on this planet called Earth. This utterly insignificant being becomes magnificently significant in the light of that truth not because of anything she has done, but simply because she believes.
David wrote it thousands of years before anyone had ever left the atmosphere and the astronauts who did leave came back saying very much the same thing: "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands" (Psalm 19:1). Victor Glover said something that stopped me entirely: "The gratitude of seeing what we saw, doing what we did, and being with who I was with — it's too big to just be in one body."
Too big to be in one body. If that is not the definition of worship, I don't know what is.
And Reid Wiseman, quiet and certain: "It's a special thing to be human, and it's a special thing to be on planet Earth."
Yes. Yes, it is.
So here I am. In a remote corner of the world, drinking pika chai and sighing over photographs and videos from space. And I find myself asking the very thing David asked thousands of years ago, looking at that same moon: "When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, what is mankind that you are mindful of them?" How is it that I’m known and so loved by this Great Creator God!
And the wonder does not end there. The God who chose this earth, who came to dwell on it, has promised to make it His home forever - a new heaven and a new earth (Revelation 21:1-2). Not an escape from this world, but its glorious completion. Which means this life I am living right now - the family, the relationships, the work, the church, the government desk, the too-much pika chai - is not a waiting room. It is the beginning of something that will never end.
Won’t you step outside tonight and look up. In the vastness that surrounds you are so intimately known and loved. Ain’t this an exciting journey to be on!
(Note: The Artemis II mission, carrying astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen, completed the first crewed lunar flyby since Apollo 17 in 1972)
Meripeni