I wanted to stand this fisheye photo on its head and flip its orientation to make the cosmos look like the world while the earth is on the periphery. We get so used to looking “up” at the cosmos, when really “out” is probably a more accurate direction. Similarly, God calls us to look outside of ourselves and to those around us.
Symbolically, it can remind us that our perspective of things material and immaterial is all too often limited. We can gaze into the galaxy and think we see it all, but it’s just a blip of the universe. Likewise, we can ponder the revealed realities of God without acknowledging the many mysteries that still remain veiled to us, here in the pilgrim Church; the full, infinite, beatific reality is yet to be shown to us.
In the meantime, we can find peace through faith in God and in his infinite love for us. You can gaze at the stars and let peace fill you, knowing that a loving God created all of this:
“Our peace of soul comes from the fact that Christ loves us because of who he is, not because of what we do—we do not earn Christ’s love by proving our own independent goodness, nor do we lessen it with our failures. We keep our eyes on the Savior at every moment and in every circumstance of our life, especially in our temptations, fears, and weakness.”—Magnificat
“The first path to peace is faith. In fact, if we lived by faith, we would live in peace. We read in Scripture, My righteous one shall live by faith. He who lives under the rule of Faith lives in perfect peace; all Faith’s teachings tend to calm us. Faith teaches that God loves us and that he loves us not as a group, but personally, individually: He loved me! Each one of us can make these words of the Apostle Paul his own without fear of error. He knows my name; he has engraved my image in his heart. Still more, I can be assured that his heart is all mine, because our Lord cannot love as we do, by halves; when he loves, he loves with his whole heart, infinitely.”—Archbishop Luis María Martínez, When God is Silent: Finding Spiritual Peace Amid the Storms of Life
