A Message from Space

When Victor Glover spoke these words from space ...

“Love God with all that you are and love your neighbor as yourself”,

I wonder how they landed with you.

I mean, imagine it.

He’s not standing in a church or sitting comfortably at home. He’s floating above the earth, looking down at this glowing, fragile, unbelievably beautiful planet. There are no borders. No noise. Just this quiet, breathtaking view of everything we know ... held together by what looks like the thinnest veil.

And from there, that simple command ... to love ... suddenly feels bigger to me. Clearer. And ... undeniable.

It makes me wonder… how complicated have we made things, anyhow?

Because from up there, you wouldn’t see divisions the way we do. You wouldn’t see who belongs where, or who’s right or wrong. You’d just see one shared home. One human family. All of us moving around, carrying our stories, our worries, our hopes ... on this tiny, shining sphere.

And somehow, in that kind of view, loving your neighbor doesn’t feel like a lofty ideal.

It just feels ... well, quite obvious.

And yet.

I know how quickly I return to smaller ways of seeing.

How easily I sort people.

How quietly I withhold kindness.

How often I make subtle exceptions to love ...

deciding, without saying it out loud, who gets my patience ... and who doesn’t.

And maybe that’s why we want to avoid noticing

that love isn’t actually confusing ...

it’s costly.

Because if it really is that simple;

if from that vantage point love is the only thing that makes sense ...

then what I do with that, here on the ground, matters more than I sometimes want it to.

Maybe it starts in that quiet moment of noticing ...

this world didn’t have to be beautiful ... but it is.

The colors. The curves. The way light rests on the water.

It feels intentional.

Like art, not accident.

And for a moment, I feel aligned with that. Grateful. Awake. Open.

But even that awareness can slip.

I rush.

I forget.

I reduce what is sacred into something manageable again.

Still ... the invitation remains.

Love God.

Love people.

Simple words and not easy ones.

They're not lived from a distance.

They're lived right here, in the ordinary friction of being human.

And perhaps that’s the real wonder.

Not just that the earth is so incredibly wondrous, so whole, so held ...

but that we are asked to reflect that same kind of care

in the way we hold one another.

Even when it costs us something.

And maybe, if we could just borrow that view for a moment ... really see what Glover saw we wouldn’t just feel awe ...

we might live differently because of it.

It’s kind of amazing to think

that sometimes it takes leaving the earth

... to remind us how to live on it, the way the Creator wants us to.

Remember Psalm 8:

When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers,

the moon and the stars, which you have set in place…

what is mankind that you are mindful of them?