You’ll have to look closely, but the featured image this month is a photograph of the earth. This shot, one of the final images taken by the Voyager 1, a space probe launched in 1977, contains a little dot about halfway down the brown line to the right.
Do you see it?
That’s us.
That’s the Earth.
Look again. That’s New York City . . . the Swiss Alps . . . the entire Pacific Ocean . . . Hawaii.
That’s the South Pole, your backyard, your childhood home’s backyard, the gravesite where your dog is buried, your church . . .
That’s the staging ground for multiple wars, scientific triumphs, pandemics, court cases, marathons, national hot dog eating contests . . .
All held and experienced in that little “pale blue dot” (as the picture’s been called).
Surely the nations are like a drop in a bucket;
they are regarded as dust on the scales;
he weighs the islands as though they were fine dust.– Isaiah 40:15 NIV –
Isaiah writes these words while reminding the reader of God’s glory and sovereignty. It turns out his metaphors were a lot more than metaphor as we behold what looks like a little mote of dust floating in the black. Voyager 1 took this photo 30 years ago, right before shutting off its camera because there was nothing else to see as it made its way to the farthest reaches of our solar system. If it turned its camera back on now, the dot would be gone.
But Isaiah brings forth these words not to minimize or undervalue our planet. He writes these things in order to get us to the glorious ending of this chapter, an ending many are familiar with:
Why do you complain, Jacob?
Why do you say, Israel,
“My way is hidden from the Lord;
my cause is disregarded by my God”?
Do you not know?
Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
and his understanding no one can fathom.
He gives strength to the weary
and increases the power of the weak.
Even youths grow tired and weary,
and young men stumble and fall;
but those who hope in the Lord
will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint.– Isaiah 40:27-31 –
This reality is meant to humble us . . . and also to help redefine our complaints and problems, which so often feel like ginormous mountains or giant suns. In our minds, the things that come against us so often feel cosmically large and looming. Yet all the while, the entirety of the earth (and all of its drama) is played out on this little speck held preciously in the hands of an attentive God.
Isaiah writes these words to give us perspective.
With this comes a lightening of our load. As the magnitude of our problems vanish and the true grandeur of God increases, our spiritual “wings” extend out and we catch the winds of grace. We rise like an eagle, or you could say that we fly like a spacecraft on a Voyage to behold and experience the glory and majesty of our Creator.