So, are you a “curious” person?  Just this past November the folks at NASA launched a new mission to Mars whose primary objective is to determine whether Mars is or has ever been able to support life though as reported, “it will not look for any specific type of life.”  Aboard the spacecraft is a rover named Curiosity whose primary role will be to comb the surface of Mars to scoop up soil, drill rocks and analyze samples taken from the surface.  Now I’m all for the discoveries and resulting benefits that come from space exploration but for some reason this particular mission has left me wrestling and wondering if there is a life parallel to be discovered here as well.  Consider with me for a moment these questions. Why does man need to travel 350 million miles to explore Mars when there is a world that waits right before our eyes?  Could it be that we are the ones that need to become more curious?

So, what parallels might we draw from overlaying a Mars mission with discovering more of life here on earth?  Well much like the rover Curiosity perhaps we too need to give ourselves the freedom to explore the vast array of opportunities of our lives that are yet to be discovered.  I mean what would our lives look like if we were to “turn over every stone” along the path of living?  It certainly seems as if we might find a person or two who are just waiting to be “scooped up” and invited into a life of discovering more of themselves.  Or from another view, what if we had the patience needed to “go the distance” with someone to help them discover more of who they’ve been designed to be.  What if, much like the case with distance, the time to travel for meaningful relationship was no longer our preeminent concern?  In other words, we adopt a “we’ll get there when we get there” posture that helps us arrive at life’s destination having enjoyed more of the journey along the way.  What if unlike the Mars mission we were less concerned about whether or not life had been or could be supported here and we were more interested in finding life like we’ve never known it before?  Come to think of it much like Curiosity we too could find ourselves looking for water and just like on Mars we would have to go below the surface to seek to find it.  But by going deep to find it we might just find the very living water that brings life to our otherwise mortal bodies.  Does any of this interest you?  Just curious.  Peace.