大象传媒

Good morning.聽 On this day 58 years ago, a metal sphere about the size of a microwave oven was hurtling through space, heading for Mars.聽 A series of unintelligible bleeps, sent out from the Joddrell Bank radio telescope in Macclesfield, told it to deploy its solar panels, which it duly did.聽 At the time, the very idea of communicating with an object over 450,000 miles away seemed like science fiction.聽 In the end, the plucky little orb would travel over 2 and a quarter million miles away from earth. What became of it after that we shall never know. In the most banal of problems, so familiar in the smartphone age, it ran out of juice.

Some years ago, I embarked on a beautiful waterfall walk in the Jura.聽 At the base of the walk, all around were warning signs.聽 The warning they carried was not about slippery rocks or uneven footpaths, but that parts of the trail had no mobile phone signal.聽 Recently, I saw a version of Maslov鈥檚 pyramid of fundamental human needs, where somebody had added another layer at the bottom, beneath the physiological needs for food and water, stating the need for access to wi-fi.聽 Within a day, someone else had redrawn it with a layer below even that, stating 鈥渂attery鈥�.聽 The inventors of that little satellite would have understood, I think.

We need to stay in touch 鈥� with each other, and with our creator.聽 In the Bible we find people calling out to God from the storm, the fiery furnace, and even the brink of the grave.聽 He always seems to hear them 鈥� distance no object.

Dear God, whenever and however we may cry out to you today, we thank you for the assurance that you will be listening. Amen
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