What Artemis 2 Reminded Me About God

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The moon captivates and incites imagination.

It transforms humans into werewolves, stabilizes our seasons, amplifies magic, tracks our time, and pulls the oceans toward the coastlines. Both real and imagined, humanity has bestowed great power on the great, orbiting rock. It's beautiful and otherworldly and yet it belongs to all of us.

Together we watched the footage from Artemis 2 and our fascination with the moon grew. The four astronauts flew farther from Earth than any humans in more than fifty years, and as they swung around the far side of the moon, something remarkable happened. The sun disappeared behind it, its corona forming a glowing halo around the darkened lunar surface. Even from 252,756 miles away, the moon could not shine on its own.

With our eyes so focused on the beauty of the moon, we can lose sight of the true power behind it. Because without the sun, the moon would be nothing. Sure, it'd still be held in orbit by Earth's gravitational pull, but no one would care, because we couldn't see it. The moon depends on the sun's light. The moon is only beautiful because it reflects the light of the sun.

Without the sun, we wouldn't see the moon's phases. It wouldn't awe us with its blue or harvest light. We wouldn't experience the wonder of an eclipse or contemplate how lovers across a great distance could be under its same glow.

These were the thoughts in my head this morning as I read through Psalm 67. "May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine upon us, so that your ways may be known on earth, your salvation among the nations."

How like the moon we are. We are beautiful because we reflect God's light. We are not beautiful in our own right. It's okay to admire the moon, and to admire each other, but we must remember who the Creator is.

Worshiping the Creator, rather than the created, is a central theme in my newest novel, Chameleon Flowers, a character-driven science fiction that asks big questions, like what happens when God creates Man, and then Man creates a Goddess.

I'd love for you to follow along as this story finds its way into the world. Sign up for my newsletter below. It's where I share personal essays, books I've loved, behind-the-scenes glimpses of the writing life, and the occasional podcast appearance. When you join, you'll receive a free short story from The Ding Dong Altar Boy, the book I wrote with my brother. Come find me there.

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