There is something quietly astonishing about a little machine, built by human hands, rolling across the rust-colored dust of another planet. The Mars rover has been in the headlines again, and every time I see one of those photographs — a barren horizon under a pale sky, wheel tracks pressed into soil no human foot has ever touched — I feel a stirring that is hard to put into words. It is the feeling of being very small, and somehow being glad to be small.
We don't stop to feel that often enough. Most of our days are spent looking down — at our phones, our to-do lists, the road in front of us. But every so often something lifts our eyes. A photograph from a hundred and forty million miles away will do it. And when our eyes lift, something in the heart wakes up.
The oldest response to the heavens
King David felt it too, long before telescopes and rockets, on the hills of Judea with only his own eyes and the night sky. He wrote: "When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?" (Psalm 8:3-4).
Notice what the vastness did to David. It did not make him feel worthless. It made him feel cherished. He looked at the enormous sky and asked, in wonder, "Why would the God who made all of this bother with someone like me?" That is the right question. And the answer is even more astonishing than the sky itself: because He wants to.
Smallness is not the same as insignificance
Our age is a little confused about this. We are told that the more we learn about the size of the universe, the smaller and less meaningful we become. A pale blue dot lost in a cold, indifferent cosmos — that's the story some tell. But Scripture tells a different story entirely. The bigness of creation is not meant to crush you. It is meant to make you marvel that a God this grand knows your name.
I think of the folks here at Outpouring, farmers and grandmothers and young couples, ordinary West Michigan people. Not one of us is going to Mars. Most of us will never do anything the world calls great. And yet the same God who spun that red planet into its orbit knows how many hairs are on your head (Matthew 10:30). He is mindful of you. He visits you.
Wonder is a doorway to worship
Here is what I've learned in decades of walking with the Lord: wonder is not a distraction from faith — it is often the front porch of it. When you let yourself be genuinely amazed at the works of God's fingers, your soul is being prepared to bow. The scientist and the child both feel it. A rover on Mars and a sunrise over a Ravenna cornfield both point the same direction: upward, outward, toward the One who made it and holds it together.
The apostle Paul said it plainly: "For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead" (Romans 1:20). Creation is a witness. Every rock on Mars, every drop in Lake Michigan, every star too far away to name — all of it testifies that Someone is behind it.
The nearness of the far-off God
What moves me most is this: the God who reaches across unimaginable distances did not stay distant from us. He came near. He took on skin and walked our dusty roads. "The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us" (John 1:14). The One who set the planets spinning laid Himself in a manger, and later on a cross, so that small creatures like us could be brought home.
So the next time you see one of those photographs, don't just scroll past. Let it lift your eyes. Let it make you feel small — and then let it remind you that the Maker of it all knows you, loves you, and came a very long way to find you. That is a wonder greater than any planet.
Join us this Sunday at 10:30am — Outpouring Worship Center, Ravenna.