The earth is a beautiful place. It is full of amazing people and incredible sights to behold. Those amazing people often treat one another terribly and those incredible sights are often underappreciated. But they linger. Their potential and their reality. Begging us to do more. To be better. Reminding us that planet earth is our home and we are created to be good stewards.

I love those big, sweeping aerial shots of the planet earth from space. The twinkling lights vaguely blinking in the darkness. The long swaths of greens. The vast spaces of blue. The splashes of icy white at the extremes. And the smattering of clouds. All turning and twisting in a strange sort of togetherness, like an orchestra.

The Crossroad Blog: hope

It is a zoomed out picture of Earth. Home. When you zoom in, there are wars and other atrocities. There is an argument between spouses. There are also hugs. And miracles. Ants are marching in a line and dolphins are playing in those blue spaces. There is so much good, bad, and ugly swirling beneath those clouds.

In one way, that zoomed out view from space is misleading. It is always a calm and quiet view. There is a certain peace to it. The distance from the chaos is almost enough to trick you into forgetting the chaos is real.

On the other hand, the zoomed out version is also very true, perhaps more true than the chaos within. The zoomed out version misses some things but it reveals others. 

Tension

Planet earth is obviously our home. Like it or not, we share those swaths of green. We breathe the air from those clouds.

There is a real beauty in that idea. That we are family members, united in the most basic, fundamental, and important ways.

But if we are a family, we are a dysfunctional one. We hurt and abuse one another. We ignore and take for granted. We do not steward the home well. And we too often fail to love those in it.

There is a real tension between recognizing the beauty of our shared togetherness and acknowledging the ways we pervert and undermine that beauty. It can feel like a zero sum game – to say it is a beautiful world negates the atrocities committed within and to say it is an atrocious world negates the beauty.

The truth is usually more complicated than we care to admit. Earth is both beautiful and tragic. It is a triumph and a disaster. Both can be true. Both are.

Zooming out reminds us of the existence of beauty and the potential for more. It reminds us of what we so often forget. We tend to focus on a tree and miss the forest. We cut off our noses to spite our face. That peaceful view from space is a reminder it does not have to be this way. We can be better. There is beauty in existence, and even more up for grabs.

Motion

One comforting thought is that the world is always in motion. It is revolving and rotating. The clouds are rolling in, the waves are swelling and subsiding. Even the lights twinkle. We cannot stop from moving forward.

The Crossroad Blog: hope

Unchecked, this reality can propagate the worst parts of us. But it is also a reminder that we can be better. We can decide anew. The seasons change. The clock progresses. The world moves. And as it moves, we are given new opportunities. Another chance to celebrate the unity and beauty of our co-existence.

Motion provides an avenue for hope. The storm clouds will give way to blue skies. Of course, the storm clouds will also return. The key for us is not to demand blue skies all the time, but to navigate both storms and serenity with character. To be good in all circumstances.

The moving earth is a kaleidoscope of opportunities. Living somewhere between hope and despair, in the strange tension that is human existence, what will we choose today?