Space and Prayer, An Essay

NASA has shut down the shuttle program. The astronauts cleared out the junk and leftover experiments from the space station. Today there’s a lot of stuff up in space. But that wasn’t always the case. Back during the early days of the Soviet space stations, the Russian cosmonauts were the first people to spend a long time in space. The first people in space spent their free time looking out at our planet earth. They were astonished at how much detail they could see. They could follow large schools of fish by the change in the color of the waters. They could see the Great Wall of China. They could track the advance of spring as fields turned green or golden. Most of all, they were astonished by all the colors. They needed new words to describe the many shades they observed so they asked for books of paint samples. They needed help from outside so they could describe what they saw.

 

Now I’m rarely at a loss for words, but of course at some point everybody finds themselves in a circumstance where your tongue is tied and you don’t know what to say. One important area of our lives where words don’t matter is prayer. The Bible assures us that we don’t need to worry about finding the right words to pray. Romans 8:28 says: We do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. Our Creator made this world colourful beyond our imaginings, and with a diversity that we may never fully explore. As our Father, God also knows what we need before we ask for it. So go ahead and pray…use words if necessary.