The bird in the tree on the rock in the void

This morning at breakfast people were talking about moon phases and tides and things. Afterwards I sat in meeting for worship trying to visualize it all. If the sun is here and the Earth is here, the full moon is out there on the other side, so the tide is pulled away from the sun . . . I looked out the window at the wet grass on the hill in front of the meeting room. In the tree next to the building a bird was singing.

Suddenly it seemed miraculous. We are on a globe of rock, flying around in space, orbiting a flaming globe and orbited by another globe of rock. And conditions on our rock are such that there is wet green grass on the hill and a bird singing in the tree. Because I usually don't think of myself as living on a rock flying through space, it's easy to forget how elegant it all is.