Is anyone out there?

Four or five times each week, I will do an internet search for new stories that capture my attention. I found one such story this morning, August 21, 2023. That date is important because the story is about an event that could happen tomorrow, August 22.

Katherine Fidler wrote the story for the Metro’s News Updates newsletter.

“On August 15, 1983, professors Masaki Morimoto and Hisashi Hirabayashi used an antenna at Stanford University in the US to send a burst of radio signals into the cosmos. The message consisted of 13 drawings depicting the history of life on Earth, our solar system, and the structure of DNA.

“Today’s team, led by Shinya Narusawa at the University of Hyogo, Japan, predicts that around now is the earliest point at which a response from intelligent life could arrive – if anyone living near the star Altair heard it. Altair, a relatively close 16.7 light-years away, is found in the Aquila constellation and is the 12th brightest star in the night sky.”

“At 10 pm tomorrow, the team will use the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s (JAXA) antenna in Saku, central Japan, to scan the skies for a reply, listening in for an hour.”

As Jan and I watch the evening news later this week, I anticipate an announcement from Professor Shinya Narusawa. (I’ve got to give the benefit of the doubt to a man with “USA” in the middle of his last name.) I hope he gets an answer! But I seriously doubt he will.

I observe that humans generally do the same kind of search in seeking the celestial being we call God. “If you are there, God, make yourself visible to me.” Or something like, “Give me a sign so I can believe you exist.”

Most folks I have conversed with on God’s existence have or have had periods when the possibility of an all-powerful, all-knowing, benevolent, creative Being exists defies logic. And the thought scares them! It is easy to push that thought away as doubt and, therefore, a sin. But I don’t think so. I think it’s another temptation erupting from living in this Fallen world. Being in the middle of a moment of profound wonder is a decision place. “How could this be true?!” is a spiritual continental divide. If we choose to go one way with that encounter, we flow into doubt and rejection of Biblical truth and move toward moral convictions that have no foundation other than our conjectures.

But, if we choose to go the other way, to allow that wonderment to blossom, it wholly becomes the genesis of a profound life-altering moment of worship of the Creator. And that worship inspires and demands a movement away from “reasonable” moral ideas, plunging us into a longing for a moral character that matches the object of our worship.

The message our fellow earthlings sent forty years ago was their assessment of human life on our planet. But we are far more than their thirteen graphics depicting “human evolution.” It seems the essential information the scientist wants an unknown human species to know is that we crawled from muck and raised ourselves to interstellar prominence. It is self-glorifying and shows contempt for our Creator and theirs.

If human-like beings are “out there” somewhere, they are expressions of the Creator, just like we are. Our human assumption is that the “aliens” threaten us. They want our planet’s resources and perhaps our flesh.

The more likely scenario is that those beings have not succumbed to the serpent’s lies and live in harmony with their, and our, Creator. They thrive in a Garden that is expanding over their planet. They are at peace most profoundly. They don’t need a savior because they are never separated from the Creator.

If we do make contact with intelligent beings “out there,” I hope they insist on us wearing masks and gloves.

Then, the Lord God formed the man out of the dust from the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being. The Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he placed the man he had formed. Genesis 2:7-8, CSV