Questions.

Ever since I can remember, I have been fascinated by “what’s out there”.

When I was 9 or 10, I would sometimes lay on the grass and stare at the sky and wonder what I could see…if my eyes could focus on things far, far away. I’d wonder if God was up there somewhere and maybe Angels were in the clouds, and if there was life on other planets, and if somebody was looking back at me.

“Out there” was fascinating because nobody really knew where it was or what was there. Even the adults couldn’t answer my questions. And as I got older the questions persisted.

Where is heaven? Where is hell? Do they really exist? Where did God come from and how did all of this start?

Most of those questions created an endless loop, since nobody really knows the answers. If God created everything, who created God. And if He always existed was there a beginning to everything. There had to be, right?

I’d wonder about time travel, and does space have an end, like a wall? It has to, right? And is there an asteroid heading for us right now that we don’t know about and the countdown clock is on?

As an only child I spent a lot of time alone, and when the weather was good, I spent it outside, and outside is the place where most of these questions originate. Sometimes I would think about all the inventions that changed things and I would wonder what hadn’t been invented yet and I’d ask God to give me a big one. He never did.

I think I was interested in the Apollo space program, and in becoming an astronaut, because of this fascination with “out there”. I’d watch a sci fi movie and everybody would freak out when the aliens landed and I always thought that was stupid. I’d make friends with them and ask if I could visit their planet. If they were hostile and wanted to kill us, they probably would have done that before they landed.

I remember watching an episode of The Twilight Zone and at the end of the show they reveal that all of us are the matter inside a tiny molecule. We had discovered that there are tiny molecules and we examined them under a microscope, but never realized that we were also a version of that…just one step up.

The Bible talks about how we’re surrounded by a “cloud of witnesses” and so I put that scripture into the context of that crazy sci-fi show without trying and it plays with my brain. Are my parents in heaven part of that unseen cloud and are they watching me and cheering me on (and sometimes shaking their heads)?

I’m still fascinated by these questions and thoughts. A couple years ago I read “Brief Answers to the Big Questions” by Stephen Hawking and realized I am not the only one. He tackled the big questions from his scientific, physicist, atheistic, practical perspective and it was an awesome read. But he admitted he didn’t really know the answers either.

Hawking reminds me that I am not very smart. These questions that fascinate me do too.