Precious in God's Sight

This post first appeared in this week's newsletter for St. John's Episcopal Church in Decatur, Alabama. To read the rest of the newsletter and learn about St. John's, click here.

Yesterday, I joined with multitudes across the country as we observed a spectacular event that reminds us both how special and how insignificant we are. For two and a half minutes, as the moon slipped completely across the face of the sun, the sky darkened, and the heart of the sun was blocked out. Only the shimmering feathery strands of the corona were visible. In its eerie light, we danced and laughed and jumped around as the completely predictable yet totally incomprehensible strangeness of the event grabbed ahold of us. In that fleeting moment, there was no time for existential contemplation—it is an experience to be lived not pondered—but, over the last few weeks and then again during the drive home last night, I had a chance to stop and ask what this solar eclipse says about us, about our place in creation, and about our relationship with our creator.

You may have read, as I did, that total solar eclipses will not last forever. Because the moon drifts another inch and half away from the Earth every year, in around 600 million years, the moon will have moved far enough away from the Earth’s surface that it will no longer fully block out the sun’s light. Those “future earthlings,” an NPR article pointed out, will not be able to see the radiance of the corona because the moon’s shadow will not be large enough to cover the rest of the sun’s rays. It turns out that only because our moon is around 400 times smaller and 400 times closer than the sun do we experience solar eclipses as we do. Not even Jupiter, with its sixty-nine moons, has one that is exactly the right proportion. What a gift that we have been given!

That means that we had better take advantage of this while we can. The next total eclipse in North America occurs in seven years, and we should start making plans for it now. We do not want to miss what in 600 million years will have disappeared from our planet forever. But who are we kidding? Who or what will even be here then? Human beings have only been on the planet for 200,000 years, and civilization as we know it has only existed for 6,000 years. Way back 600 million years ago, there was not even complex multicellular life on the planet. The atmosphere did not have enough oxygen in it to produce an ozone layer, which provides necessary protection for land-dwelling life. Where will we be in another 600 million years? No one knows for sure, but, if there is any intelligent life left on this planet, I feel certain that it will not be standing around lamenting the loss of this magnificent sight.

We are a self-absorbed species. We cannot help it. It is written into our DNA, and we have, in turn, written it into our religion. The creation account in Genesis portrays human beings as the crown of creation, the species to which the rest of creation is entrusted and the only one that is made in God’s image. In Psalm 8, the poet marvels at the splendor of creation, writing, “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them?” Yet, as the psalmist continues, he remarks in comparison that God has made us only “a little lower than God, and crowned [us] with glory and honor.” When Galileo dared to remove the Earth from the center of creation, the institutional church imprisoned him for a heresy not forgiven for 350 years. When Charles Darwin questioned the origins of our species and the biblical reckoning of geological time, many church leaders labelled him as thoroughly anti-religious, a stigma that persists in many Christian communities to this day. Over the last five hundred years, we may have learned a lot about how small we are in the grand scheme of things, but how has that changed the way we think of our relationship with God?

What if there is intelligent life on other planets? Does God’s plan of salvation include them? Can humanity truly be the center of creation if the universe existed for billions of years before our infinitesimally small mark was made on the history of all time and space? If the universe carries on for billions of years after the last human being has died off, does that change our understanding of what the end of time means? If there are trillions of galaxies in the universe and each one contains billions of stars, how many other planets are there out there where the size and distance of an orbiting moon allow the same sort of eclipse that we watched yesterday? Is there anyone else out there watching it happen?

Nevertheless, on this tiny speck of rock in this tiny solar system in this tiny corner of the galaxy in this incomprehensibly huge universe, insignificant creatures like us are given momentary glimpses into the beauty that is our creator, and we see in them a reminder that, no matter how small we are, God knows us and loves us and calls each of us by name. How amazing that the one who created all things has numbered all of the hairs on our heads! How awesome that the one who spoke all planets and stars and galaxies into being watches over every sparrow, every squirrel, and every person as carefully and lovingly a parent watches over her newborn child! As we learn more and more about the enormity and complexity of the universe as well as how miniscule and fleeting we are in comparison, our understanding of our place in God’s heart grows bigger. We are all precious in God’s sight even if that sight stretches to places and beings beyond our imagination. We may not be as important as we thought we were, but we are still just as important to God.