Seeing The World Through Astronaut Eyes

Like many of you, I've been awed by the photos coming back to earth from Artemis II.

Images of earth from a distance that almost doesn’t feel real. Blues that look painted. Clouds that look placed. A planet that somehow looks whole.

And I find myself staring at those images and feeling like images have never been more misleading?

Because I live on the surface of those images. The surface where leaders threaten to eliminate the inhabitants of those images from existence. Where people in the images are divided over everything that is divisible. Where voices roll ever louder around the world of those images in tones less and less kind.

And I keep coming back to the same question: How can something be so beautiful and so broken at the same time?

Astronauts have talked about what happens when they see Earth from that distance. There’s actually a name for it. The “overview effect.” They don’t just see the earth differently. They feel it differently.

From up there, there are no borders. No arguments. No sides. Just one planet.

They know what’s happening down here. They know the conflict. The division. The hate. But from where they sit, they can’t see it.

And maybe that’s not because it isn’t there. Maybe it’s because it isn’t all there is.

Maybe beauty doesn’t disappear because brokenness exists. Maybe it just gets harder to see when we’re standing too close to it.

I wonder sometimes if God sees us like that.

Not unaware of the pain. Not dismissive of the brokenness. But not consumed by it either.

Because what I tend to see are moments. The ENDLESS headlines - the sometimes true, often not - fragments of a much bigger story. And if I’m honest, the closer I stand to the headlines, the easier it is to believe that war and hate is the whole story.

But what if it’s not?

What if God sees the whole picture?

Not just who we are in our worst moments, but who we are becoming. Not just what is breaking, but what is being rebuilt. Maybe while we see and feel the damage, God sees the design.

Maybe God sees us through astronaut eyes; or do astronauts see us through the eyes of God?

I’ve had moments in my own life where everything felt like it was falling apart. And maybe if someone had taken a snapshot of my life in those moments, that’s exactly what it would have looked like. Broken.

But time has a way of creating distance. And distance has a way of revealing things we couldn’t see up close. Growth. Healing. Even beauty. Not in spite of what I went through, but somehow woven through it.

And I wonder if that’s part of what God sees all the time. A perspective not limited by proximity. A vision not overwhelmed by what is right in front of him. A love that holds the broken and the beautiful at the same time.

Because from where I stand this morning, this world is nothing but falling apart.

But from where he sees, with his astronaut eyes, it might still be coming together.