Lonely run after Him.

      Carl Sagan in all his learning never came to the point where he knew God. He knew about Him. He saw his works and wonders, but was never smart enough to connect the dots. That is a shame. He had a brilliant mind, maybe too brilliant.
When he worked with NASA in 1990 the voyager 1 was on its way out of our galaxy. It was reaching the end of our radio control of its movements. Soon it would be gone from our reach. As one of its last acts Carl had NASA turn its cameras back toward earth and take a picture. The result was the amazing "Pale Blue Dot".  You have probably seen it. Sagan took a pen and wrote some thoughts about that picture that I would like to share with you.
    Looking at this tiny blue dot in a "great cosmic arena", this blue earth surrounded by a seemingly infinity of stars, he said;
"Look ...at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us.  On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and  explorer, every teacher of morals, and every corrupt politician, every superstar and supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam."
     To Carl this was a lonely, speck of dust. To him we were by ourselves. He looked at the picture and felt lonely, small, insignificant.
     I had just the opposite affect to the picture and to the prose. I looked at the dust and thought of the human condition and felt the wonder of God. The song How Great is Our God...Sing with me How Great is Our God and all will see how great, how great is our God,  comes to my mind. That the creator of this vast, seemingly infinite universe knows me is miraculous! He knows my name! He talks with me. He leads me. He cares about me. He sent his son into this small world to redeem me. Little ole me. Less that a dot on that piece of dust. Wow! Talk about Horton hears a who! God hears me! John 3:16 means soooooo much more now. He came to Earth. He became one of us. Why? So that I could live with Him forever! The answer to Carl's loneliness is found in that photograph. Unfortunately he was too blind to see it. He came away thinking how poor and lonely he was, instead of seeing how important, rich and loved his was. The thing that escapes me, is how people can look at life and come up with Carl's conclusion. There is only one possibility. These people never met the Creator. Studied about him. Gazed at his handiwork through telescopes and microscopes, but never came to know him. He remained the "stranger of Galilee".  As far as I know Carl died in his loneliness. That is a shame. I feel in a way kindred with Carl. I went through a period where I was very lonely, but I found God and His love.
      In a This Week,  Volume XI, John Stevens writes about the lonely times that people have and what to do about them.  I think of the last few lines of Stevens' This Week when we are talking about Carl and others who feel lonely. He said;"Growth brings many lonely adjustments, but you must remember that the problem is not your environment. With God, the problem is what you are becoming. Everything that He does has one purpose: to bring you into sonship. On your part, all that you have to do is to seek the Lord with all your heart. Are you lonely? Then run after Him! Reach up to Him! You will find Him on the higher level which He has prepared for you." That is the answer, if we are lonely turn to God and His love. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to do that, it just takes a lonely heart.