Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: Blue (10/08/09)
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TITLE: The Pale Blue Dot. | Previous Challenge Entry
By Danielle King
10/15/09 -
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PHEW! So glad they remembered to pack the camera.
Now I’m not blessed with high IQ. I’m no scholar. I don’t understand big words and I definitely can’t do maths. I still draw stick men, hold a sewing needle like a poker and got chucked out of the school choir for throwing everyone off key.
I’m simple!
I know it!
I love it!
Because....
On a chilly February morning in 1990, as I was mindlessly gazing out of the window at the grey skies and looming rain clouds, I had no idea that I was being photographed by an astronaut from 4 billion miles away.
I was snapped in my own home, a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam....minus lippy!
When the grainy images from Voyager reached earth, there we were, smiling and waving our flags, in our own villages, cities, countries and continents, on our own home planet, ‘The Pale Blue Dot.’
Whoa! Did that blow my tiny brains out!
And never have I fully recovered from the infamous 1968 Apollo mission ‘Earthrise’ photograph. An image so powerful and eloquent, it speaks to me still. Not only as an image from history, but more a message from almighty, all powerful, God Himself. To simple little people like me!
You see, if I was an academic, or a skilled craftsman, clever and proficient at something or other, relying on my acquired knowledge and innate talents and abilities, then I think I could easily become rather puffed up! I would need to analyse, rationalise and seek out explanations for things that simply are, and more to the point, ARE, without the contribution of mine or my predecessor’s skills and organisational abilities.
Yes. I think I could become rather proud!
We have no idea how big the universe is, but I’m told, by one of those clever people, that it’s so big that we would have to use a ruler that’s 5.88 trillion miles to measure things with. The ruler is called a ‘light year.’ The largest thing that’s been measured so far is 13 billion light years away. Oooh!
Look into the night sky and see the stars. Hundreds of billions of these twinkling jewels make up our spiral galaxy, the Milky Way. One of those stars is our sun rotating around the centre of the galaxy every 250 million years. One of the planets circling the sun is planet Earth.
Bob out there tonight in your pyjamas, look up into the blackness and try to visualise the Earthrise image. Then consider that you are actually standing on that beautiful blue marble. If you are old enough you would be on the original snapshot. I was! Well maybe you’d need to polish your specs a little to see me, but I was definitely there. Where else would there be for me to go in order to not be there?
You see I’m uncomplicated aren’t I? God gave me the grace to accept, that as the psalmist said,
“By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, their starry host by the breath of His mouth. He spoke and it came to be; He commanded, and it stood firm.” Psalm 33: 6, 9.
He also gave me the grace to understand that without Him, I am a momentary infinitesimal blip on the timeline of history. An alliance of dust particles held together by His breath.
And the mystery of all mysteries, that those clever professors will never explain, that I am loved and valued by the God of all creation.
I am invited into a personal relationship with Him. Because I’m simple and I believe He is who He says He is!
So next time life threatens to poke out your eyes and gobble you up, when your thoughts spiral out of control, consider this;
God created a breathtakingly stunning, intricately ordered, scientifically dependable universe and our home, the beautiful blue planet teeming with life, is the one he fashioned for you and me, made in His image and likeness.
He is organised and detail oriented, reliable and trustworthy. He loves us.
Trust Him and feel secure in His massive hands.
Simple, isn’t it!
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