Did you see those stunning pictures sent back by spaceship Galileo before it crashed two days ago into Jupiter's atmosphere? There they were: crystal clear images of Jupiter's rings and its various moons three billion miles away, one of which, covered in ice, may contain some form of life. And it made me wonder what life on earth looks like from that far away.
It's the great paradox. On the one hand the whole planet earth is one tiny point in a universe 18 billion light years across, and we, so small, so short lived, are mere dust on the surface of eternity. But on the other, what miracles of achievement we're capable of. After all, it's only 100 years since Wilbur and Orville Wright made the first powered flight and now we're sending probes into deep space.
We are so insignificantly small, and yet we remain the only form of life in the known universe capable of asking why we are here. It was all said so precisely in the book of psalms three thousand years ago: "When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and stars you have set in place: what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? Yet you made him little lower than the angels and crowned him with glory and honour." We are small - but we have immortal longings, and that's the theme of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, which begins this Friday night.
Our other festivals recall great moments in Jewish history, but the new year is our annual celebration of creation, the big bang in which order emerged from chaos, giving rise to stars and planets and life and us. It's the time when we're most conscious of standing in the presence of infinity, as if we were up there with spaceship Galileo looking down on earth.
And it's hard not to hear a whisper from the soul of the universe that we call God, saying: your planet is so small, your life so short, why do you waste so much in conflict and strife, inflicting misery on one another, sometimes even in my name. From down there, the things over which you fight may seem large. From up here they look very small indeed. Perhaps it's not a bad idea once a year to celebrate the universe and learn to enjoy, not destroy. May it be a good year for all of us and for the world we hold in trust from God.
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