Friday, April 23, 2021

God as Rocket, God as Space Station

This morning, in the hour or two before sunrise, I knew that the skies would be active:  a meteor shower, the space station flying over, and the launch of the Space X rocket.  Periodically, I went outside and peered at the dark sky.  I had in mind a blog post that I would write about God as space station or God as Space X rocket.

I saw nothing out of the ordinary, and I'm not surprised.  I spend a lot of time in South Florida trying to see celestial events, and it's often too light polluted or too cloudy or raining.  But my metaphor can still work.

Most of us, when we're on the lookout for God, we're looking for something showy, something obvious:  fire in the shrubbery, descending tongues of flame, or ascending rockets.  Sometimes, as we know, God does function that way.  

But our sacred texts remind us that God is often not working in such a showy way.  God is often working almost imperceptibly in ways that most of us won't ever see--much like the space station moving overhead.

And sometimes, we're rewarded for our careful watch.  This morning, about a half hour after the rocket launch, I saw something streaming across the sky--quite a contrail and quite a quick pace. I know that the rocket will orbit the earth for 18ish hours before heading to the space station, so I'm wondering if that's what I saw.

But even if we can't see a thing, God is still there, a creative force in a vast cosmos.  Or maybe it's time for a different metaphor.  Tomorrow I'll write about Jesus as mRNA vaccine.

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