The Huge, Tiny City

Humans were made in the image of God, and this is obvious. Humankind is powerful, wise, and strong. We have sent man to the moon; we have bridged great rivers; we have touched the sky with our skyscrapers. We have constructed great cities that tower over our heads and are known world wide. We have created light. We have looked into the vast reaches of space and into the darkest depths of the human body. We are great. We are powerful. We are special.

Or are we? Yes, we are made in the image of God, but are our accomplishments so great? Are our cities so extravagant? Are we really that powerful? Are we actually invincible? Because of our pride and our assurance in our own ability, we have led ourselves to believe that we are powerful enough to tame the Earth and to rule over it like gods. Who are we to even think such a thought?

I am not invincible. I am not all-powerful. I am really, actually not. No one is. A man will stand on the top of the tallest building in LA and declare himself and humanity important because we have defied gravity and kissed the very sky. But, as he stands there in his own, fake glory, I take a picture of the entire city from a true masterpiece of design, a mountain. I stand on the lower foothills of a great mountain that passes the very clouds, and I see the great city in the distance. I do not see the important man. I see no one at all. I remembered what Neil Armstrong said after returning from his mission to the moon, "It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small." I put up my thumb and I blotted out all of LA, every man and woman frantically going about life in that huge, great city. We are not great. We are not all-powerful. We are, in the grand scheme of things, quite simply nothing. Yet the Creator of this vast Universe made Himself into a nothing and gave his life so that we might live. I lifted my digital Nikon D70, set the exposure, tried to focus on the pinprick of a city, and, when I pushed the little silver button, hoped that Los Angeles did not have too much trouble climbing into my lens.