Better is a little
with righteousness,
than great revenues
without righteousness.

– Proverbs: 16:8

It was in 1968 when astronauts took the iconic picture Earthrise from the surface of the moon. Despite tremendously unsettled and upsetting times, assassinations and the horrors of the Vietnam War, people paused to see our home planet, as they had never seen it before. Likewise, in 1992, as the Voyager spacecraft was leaving our solar system, astronomer, Carl Sagan asked NASA to turn the cameras around and look at Earth. This time it was just a pale blue dot amid a great, encompassing cosmic darkness.

Sagan would later refer to this photo in a book, noting the insignificance of this lonely speck in the cosmos, while recognizing that Earth is the only home we have ever known. It is where everyone we love or have ever loved has lived. He went on to say that the most important thing this image taught him was that there is no indication that anyone will come to solve our problems. We should be kinder to one another and our home.

We are living during a global pandemic, faced with a virus that knows no borders, culture, nationality, race, ethnicity, political party, or social ranking. Personal wealth can melt away in a flash, along with presumptions of security and safety.

Whether through divine will, or coincidence, the world has been given a time out. The stark realities of Covid-19 reveal the arrogance and foolishness of all the assumptions of invulnerability that we try to hide behind. We really are cohabitants on a fragile planet, and we need to take care of it and each other.

Love God, Love Your Neighbor and everybody is your neighbor.

- John Shardlow, RLC Member