Artemis II was truly a triumph for our space program that is being both touted and applauded by all Americans. While there is nothing wrong with celebrating this incredible feat of human ingenuity, it is important to keep it in proper perspective, lest we overestimate our space program’s success and over-exaggerate our own significance.

Before Alan Shepard became the first American in space and John Glenn the first to orbit the earth, the Soviet Union’s Yuri Gagarin did both, on April 12, 1961. During his single orbit of the earth, in his little metal capsule, circling our orb by the centripetal force of its gravitational pull, this communist cosmonaut blasphemously boasted, “I don’t see any God up here.” Afterward, Nikita Khrushchev, the leader of the Soviet Union, boldly and blasphemously declared to the whole world, “We have searched the heavens and there is no God.”

Artemis II, which flew over 4,000 miles beyond the backside of the moon, has adopted the Star Trek motto of Gene Roddenberry, by proudly pronouncing that it has “boldly gone where no man has gone before.” Yet, even this august accomplishment must be kept within proper perspective. Although the maximum distance Artemis II reached beyond the earth was 252,757 miles, astronomers estimate that the universe is 93 billion light-years in diameter. Of course, a light year is the distance light travels in a year at the speed of light, which is 186,000 miles per second. In spite of the incomprehensible vastness of our universe, the Bible teaches us that God, who spoke it into existence, measures it all with the span of His hand (Hebrews 11:3; Isaiah 40:12).

The famous naturalist, William Beebe, told the following story about Teddy Roosevelt. At Sagamore Hill, after an evening of talk, the two would go out on the lawn and search the skies for a certain spot of star-like light near the lower left-hand corner of the Great Square of Pegasus. Then Roosevelt would recite to Beebe the following words: “That is the Spiral Galaxy in Andromeda. It is as large as our Milky Way. It is one of a hundred million galaxies. It consists of one hundred billion suns, each larger than our sun.” Afterward, Roosevelt would grin and say, “Now I think we are small enough! Let’s go to bed.”