In the last month or so I have reread some of my favorite novels as an escape from the world of papers and projects. The latest book I read was the first of C. S. Lewis’s space trilogy, Out of the Silent Planet. In this book the main character, Ransom, is kidnapped and taken to Mars by a couple of fellow human beings. While talking to a sorn, one of the Martians, the sorn decides to show him Earth, or the silent planet as they call it, in a type of telescope. This is what goes through his head when he is looking at small Earth through the telescope:

“He wondered for a moment if it was Mars he was looking at; then, as his eyes took in the markings better, he recognised what they were–Northern Europe and a piece of North America. They were upside down with the North Pole at the bottom of the picture and this somehow shocked him. But it was Earth he was seeing–even, perhaps, England, though the picture shook a little and his eyes were quickly getting tired, and he could not be certain that he was not imagining it. It was all there in that little disk–London, Athens, Jerusalem, Shakespeare. There everyone had lived and everything had happened; and there, presumably, his pack was still lying in the porch of an empty house near Sterk. ‘Yes,’ he said dully to the sorn. ‘That is my world.’ It was the bleakest moment in all his travels.” -p. 96

Can you imagine going into space and seeing the world no bigger than a dot in the sky? Everything you have ever saught after, everyone you have ever loved, everything you were ever afraid of are no bigger than a flea.

Certainly brings a little perspective to our worldy pursuits, doesn’t it? How big is your god? Do you strive for success, pleasure, money, security? If you were able to see it from a million miles away, would it still seem as important?

“The grass withers, the flower fades,
But the word of our God stands forever.”
Isaiah 40:8

“For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul? For what will a man give in exchange for his soul?”
Jesus, Mark 8:35-37