Astronauts return from space but trip home is diverted by pandemic: Trusting the God who knows our pain

NASA astronauts Andrew Morgan and Jessica Meir returned
safely today from the International Space Station. A capsule carrying them and
Russian cosmonaut Oleg Skripochka touched down in Kazakhstan as scheduled.

However, all of Kazakhstan’s provinces are in coronavirus
lockdown. As a result, search and rescue teams could not set up base in the
area where the capsule landed. So the US astronauts will have to drive 186
miles to the city of Kzylorda, where they will board a NASA aircraft.

After 205 days in space, 3,280 orbits of Earth, and a trip of 86.9 million miles, their return home is being diverted by the virus.

One of the many ways the COVID-19 pandemic is so
unprecedented is the fact that it is impacting our world in such an
all-encompassing way. It’s hard to identify an area of our lives that is not
being affected.

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station could not
catch the virus, of course. But when they returned to our planet, they joined
the rest of us in facing this pandemic.

The solidarity of the virus’s effect, however, is also one
of our strongest causes for hope.

Trusting the God who knows our pain

Medical researchers from around the world are working on
therapies and vaccines. Governments from around the world are seeking ways to
help each other with needed supplies. And the most common refrain I have heard
in these days, “We’re all in this together,” is a source of hope.

Psychologists have long noted the “chameleon effect”—our
nonconscious mimicry of the behaviors of those with whom we interact as we seek
to connect with them. Studies show that we are drawn to people who feel the
same way we do about the world. Happy people seek out happy people; those who
are depressed or discouraged are drawn to people who are depressed…