There’s something poetic about sending the famous Captain Kirk from Star Trek to space, for real, and his emotional response after touching back down was priceless. As he told Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos, “I hope I never recover from this. I hope I can maintain what I feel now… I don’t want to lose it.”
Here’s a 90-year-old in childlike wonder, experiencing that almost spiritual part of space travel reflected by many astronauts throughout history. Often called the “overview effect,” space tends to raise deep longings for significance.
Pioneers of travel by plane probably thought that it could never bore anyone. But, it does, like anything that becomes normal. Maybe it’s because the only thing that can permanently ground our sense of wonder is God Himself, who put eternity in human hearts and placed us in an incredibly created universe that ultimately points us to Himself. The only thing BIG enough to sustain our wonder.
Publication date: October 25, 2021
Photo courtesy: Guillermo Ferla/Unsplash
John Stonestreet is President of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, and radio host of BreakPoint, a daily national radio program providing thought-provoking commentaries on current events and life issues from a biblical worldview. John holds degrees from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (IL) and Bryan College (TN), and is the co-author of Making Sense of Your World: A Biblical Worldview.
The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of CrosswalkHeadlines.
BreakPoint is a program of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. BreakPoint commentaries offer incisive content people can't find anywhere else; content that cuts through the fog of relativism and the news cycle with truth and compassion. Founded by Chuck Colson (1931 – 2012) in 1991 as a daily radio broadcast, BreakPoint provides a Christian perspective on today's news and trends. Today, you can get it in written and a variety of audio formats: on the web, the radio, or your favorite podcast app on the go.