ALIENS

Different Perspective, Internet Domain

“The first day or so we were all pointing to our countries.
The third or fourth day we were pointing to our continents.
By the fifth day, we were only aware of the earth.”
--Sultan Bin Salman Al Saud

I ran across this quote from one of the International Space Station astronauts recently. It’s always interesting to view any situation from a different perspective. I remember confronting the term “alien” years ago on one of our first trips to colorful Colorado. We were returning to our car that was parked in a remote lot at beautiful Maroon Bells National Park outside Aspen. A nearby jeep had a green bumper sticker with jagged mountain outlines and the bold word “NATIVE” overprinted on it. Parked right next to it was a van with the exact sticker design on the back window that proclaimed “ALIEN”. And here we were in the midst of one of the most outstanding natural places on the planet with two families proclaiming their differing right to be here.

Another one of my favorite Internet meme’s consists of a portrait of a “Native American” Indian proclaiming “So you don’t like aliens. When are you packing?” And then one of my most mind cringing quotes from some History Channel episodes on the origins of modern man always begins with the phrase “according to ancient alien theorists”. According to some “revered theorists” human beings evolved from biological experiments that may have possibly originated from another race in another universe.

One of my favorite quotes on our environment is that “we don’t inherit the earth from our parents. Rather we borrow it from our children.” This world doesn’t belong to any of us. All of us are simply stewards of this planet that we use for just a short span of time. And all of us have been wired with this underlying low level of anxiety that unconsciously reminds us that we are all just aliens here, since our real home lies beyond this life. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if somehow we all could understand this eternal truth from the perspective of our international space station--or better yet, from the perspective of the One who created it all in the first place?