A Message In A Bottle

A Message in a Bottle

In 1972 Voyager 2 was launched. Its projected journey was 1.4 billion miles. It passed Jupiter in 1979. Traveling at speeds of thirty-five thousand miles per hour, it hurtled past Saturn, Uranus, and Pluto before plunging into interstellar space in 1990.

Aboard the Voyager 2 is a recording of the sounds of Earth. Babies crying and children laughing. Traffic jams and jackhammers. Singing of choirs, music of symphonies, and songs of romance. The pulsating beat of heavy metal rock music. The screams of airplanes and the fury of nature. A cacophony of sounds that capture the essence of life on this planet.

Those sounds serve as a time capsule, waiting for someone to make it play. Today, out in the distant vastness of the universe, a lonely spacecraft journeys toward an unknown destination, ready to break the silence of outer space with the sounds of humanity.

It has a surrealistic feel to it. Did the scientists at NASA put a message in a bottle and cast it into a cosmic ocean? Did they fear that we stand on the precipice of a nuclear, biological, or ecological holocaust? Were they afraid that our geopolitical house of cards might collapse into apocalyptic chaos?

Maybe Voyager 2 is a cry for help from a distressed planet. A high-tech toss of the dice that some superior intelligence out there might hear the sounds of Earth. Like a bottle placed in the sea by a marooned sailor, Voyager 2 bobs through the trackless reaches of the cosmic ocean with a recorded message: “If you are out there, this is Earth. If there is still time, help us. If our time has run out, remember us.”

But there’s good news for the programmers of Voyager 2, or for anyone else who has lost hope. There is someone out there, beyond the farthest expanse of our cosmic ocean. He knows that we exist. He never misses a single sound, especially our cries for help.

He didn’t wait for us to perfect our technology so we could toss a bottle with a message into the interstellar seas. Two thousand years ago, he left heaven to come to a lost and dying planet. He humbled himself to enter the womb of an unwed teenage girl. From the moment of conception, this baby was fully God and fully human. His earthly name was Jesus. He was born to die so that he might redeem this Earth and all those who receive him as Savior and Lord. He rose from the dead and went back to heaven. But he’s coming again to make everything right. Remember, history is his story. He writes it with a happy ending for those who belong to him.

As you consider your own salvation, think about the haunting story of Voyager 2 and the happier story of heaven’s great rescue operation that was launched just for you. Maybe this new take on something Saint Augustine said will resonate with your heart:

God has made us for himself, and his heart will be restless until we find our rest in his arms.

This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.

1 John 4:10