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Good morning. 50 years ago today, the Apollo 11 lunar module touched down and Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took the first steps on the moon’s surface. After over a decade of competition between the Soviet Union and the United States, and billions of dollars later, Armstrong uttered the iconic words ‘one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind’. But where are we leaping? For as long as humans have told stories we have looked to the sky for answers about what we are doing here, and why. Those answers seem to depend on what we hope to see. In the space race of the 1950s and 60s, Soviet Union leader Nikita Kruschev linked space travel and atheism, having successfully sent the first man – Yuri Gagarin – into space. At a meeting of communist party leaders, he asked: ‘Why should you clutch at God? Look, Gagarin flew in space and saw no God.’ Buzz Aldrin had the opposite experience. Having landed on the moon he turned to worship, receiving communion in the radio blackout. He read a passage from Scripture in which Jesus says, ‘I am the vine, you are the branches. Whosoever abides in me will bring forth much fruit. Apart from me you can do nothing.’… Aldrin later recalled: “some of the first words spoken on the moon were the words of Jesus Christ, who made the Earth and the moon — and Who, in the immortal words of Dante, is Himself the “Love that moves the Sun and other stars.” Looking into space reveals our beliefs about our place in the universe. In the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams imagined a torture device called the Total Perspective Vortex, showing you infinite space and within it yourself, an invisible dot on an invisible dot. How do we cope with our impossible smallness? At times it has turned me to fear, to awe, and even to worship. But as awareness of our smallness grows, so does the possibility of leaving our planet and settling on a different one. Would we do better elsewhere? In the last century we have so disrupted our own ecosystems that they may now face total collapse. Even beyond the earth, we have already left more than 7,000 tonnes of rubbish floating in space. Perhaps, 50 years on from our giant leap, it would be timely to be reminded of our infinite smallness. In my own life that is often where I find I can truly encounter ‘the Love that moves the Sun and other stars’.