The Astronaut Who Couldn't Stop Weeping

When astronaut Ron Garan looked out the cupola window of the International Space Station in 2011, he saw something that broke him open. Earth hung in the blackness — a thin, luminous atmosphere clinging to its surface like breath on a cold morning. He called it the "orbital perspective," and it left him in tears.

From 250 miles up, every city was a faint smudge. Every ocean fit inside a porthole. Every war, every wedding, every newborn's first cry happened on that pale blue marble smaller than his outstretched thumb. He felt crushingly insignificant.

And yet — there he was. A five-foot-ten primate from Long Island, breathing recycled air in a tin can hurtling at 17,500 miles per hour, conducting experiments that would advance medicine for millions. Somehow, impossibly, he was there. A creature small enough to vanish against the cosmos, yet trusted with the work of tending it.

That is the staggering tension the psalmist holds in Psalm 8. David looks up at the ancient night sky — no light pollution, just a crushing canopy of stars — and whispers, "What is mankind that You are mindful of them?" The answer should be "nothing." But the Almighty crowns these dust-creatures with glory, hands them dominion over flocks and herds, birds and fish, the whole teeming earth.