from our Lay Leader
Last Thursday, NASA’s Mars 2020 mission team safely landed the rover “Perseverance” on the surface of Mars and within a minute transmitted its first picture of the Martian landscape. I watched NASA‘s TV coverage transfixed as the “socially distanced” team members sat at their mission control stations anxiously awaiting the status of each milestone event until finally the big one came: “touchdown confirmed.” As the team jumped up from their seats and punched the air above their heads and shouted, I raised my hands and clapped and wept, my facial muscles contorting my face uncontrollably. I was surprised at the strong emotional response I felt.
What was the cause of my emotional response? A few days before the landing, I had watched an interview with the manager of the mission’s entry, descent, and landing team, who had served that role on four previous Mars missions. He said when the mission team celebrates at the moment of a successful landing, the emotion they feel is not happiness – it is relief. It is the release of the anxiety of whether the landing will be successful, which has been building up incrementally over time and crests in the second of time before the signal that the spacecraft has safely landed. Those team members have worked on the mission for many years, some more than 10. Their lives have revolved around the planning, designing, testing, and building of the spacecraft and preparing for the execution of the mission. Their ultimate goal is to have the purpose of the mission fulfilled – the exploration of another planet. But the success of the mission is also the affirmation and culmination of all their work over those years – thousands of hours for each person – in creating from nothing something. Something meaningful to themselves, to their souls, and to all of mankind, and nevertheless accepting that everyone on the mission team is fallible, that every one of us of the species, Homo sapiens, makes mistakes. And when everyone’s efforts are wrapped up together, they suffer collectively in their anxiety and celebrate together in success.
Since mankind began sending spacecraft to Mars in the 1960s, about 50% of the missions have been successful. Each person who was part of this Mars 2020 mission team accepted this prospect when they began working on this mission, the prospect that all of their effort – all of their hard work, many nights of sleep deprivation, angst over critical decisions, and nagging worries whether they overlooked something critical to mission success – would result in about a 50-50 chance of achieving the intended purpose. A huge investment by each person and the chance of failure equal to that of success. All of that pent-up anxiety over the years, all of it was released in that one moment: “Touchdown confirmed.”
My own emotion was driven from several acting forces: relief and compassion for the mission team members, gratitude for God‘s answer to my prayer asking that the spacecraft land safely, joy at the prospect of future exploration and discoveries on Mars in the coming weeks, months, and years, and fulfillment of my more expansive desire for mankind to explore the universe, a passion that I have had since childhood.
The universe is an amazing, awe-inspiring creation. The universe is Reality; it is the manifestation of God‘s creativity. Exploring it and learning more about it – our own planet, our neighboring planets, comets, asteroids, stars, galaxies – is immensely satisfying. In exploring and discovering and learning about the universe, we are coming to better know God, ourselves, and our place in the universe. He has given us this desire to know Him, to know Him through His creation, to know His purpose for us.
As David tells us in Psalm 139:14, we are wonderfully made and God’s works are wonderful. God has given us the ability to go beyond ourselves, to go beyond our own cradle of humanity, and to explore distant planets as well as our inner selves, and to experience the God who made us and who made the universe. And the journey is worth every bit of our investment, because God rewards us as we seek Him and He releases every bit of anxiety that we hold, assuring us of success in our continual pursuit of Him.