The novel Orbital by Samantha Harvey tells the story of 4 astronauts and 2 cosmonauts orbiting the earth 16 times a day at seventeen and a half thousand miles an hour in a spaceship made of 17 modules. [p. 3] It is a well designed life support system. They are confined and carefully monitored but it is perilous nonetheless. One little thing could go wrong and they could all die.
In contrast, Harvey reflects on the hazards of life on Earth. “Not the multiple perils of earthly freedom where you roam about quite unmonitored, quite unbounded, beset by ledges and heights and roads and guns and mosquitoes and contagion and crevasses and the hapless criss-cross of eight million species all vying to survive.” [p.30] Well, that being said, Earth doesn’t seem very safe either. It has its perils.
But as I think about the ‘perils of earthly freedom’ it may be that the biggest threat to humans is humans themselves. It seems far more likely that one would come to harm from another human than from a volcano erupting or a tidal wave or a bug bite. The biggest threat we may experience, the source of our greatest fears, may be things that are perpetrated by other humans; ones we may know and ones we don’t know. We are the greatest threat to our own safety.
Can that be said of any other species? They are their own greatest threat? It is something to think about as we seek to re-turn our lives to God in this Lenten season.
Prayer: May we come to see every other person as our sister, brother, or sibling, as Jesus did. May we seek to support and protect one another for the perpetuation of our species and the good of the planet. Let me do something for the good of another today. Amen.
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Devotion prepared by Rev. Kim P. Wells, pastor of Lakewood United Church of Christ in St. Petersburg, FL
The devotions this Lenten season will be based on the novel Orbital by Samantha Harvey. Orbital won the Booker Prize in 2024. It is a beautifully written story about the experience of a group of people orbiting the Earth in a spaceship. They see 16 sunrises and sunsets in a 24 hour period. The book is a reflection on the experience of living together and appreciating planet Earth in a new way.
Lakewood United Church of Christ 