I had completely forgotten about the Rosetta space mission, until the news eleven days ago that the Philae probe had successfully landed on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (clearly not a name chosen for publicity or fame). I don’t blame myself for forgetting, though. After all, it was over ten years ago that Rosetta left earth – but that is just the beginning of its astounding achievements. They landed this probe on this comet, which sounds tricky enough – and then you hear that the comet was hurtling through space at 80,000 miles per hour and 300 million miles from earth. Then they got it to transmit images and data back to earth that are still being analysed. The one glitch is that the probe bounced on landing and found itself in the shade, and so has now fallen silent. When the comet gets closer to the sun around next August, there may be enough sunlight to recharge the solar batteries and wake Philae up – or maybe not.
Why do I recount this extraordinary tale? Well, partly because it is extraordinary. It shows us the brilliance of human beings. How on earth (or even in space) did they pull this one off? Truly, there are times when human beings are like gods. At the same time, though, it shows our limitations. It hasn’t quite worked as intended, all because of that lousy bounce. For all our brilliance, we are not gods. Here is both the glory and the humility of human beings. We are “a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned with glory and honour” (Psalm 8:5, NIV), and it is God who put us there.