Ten Thousand Years, And We're Still Building Babel

Felix Baumgartner doing a test at 71,000 feet.
photo by Red Bull Content Pool

I was one of thousands -- perhaps millions -- whose computers were locked to the Red Bull Stratos live feed yesterday. If you don't know what that is, here's the gist. A world-famous skydiver was to climb into a capsule to be lifted by balloon -- the largest human-bearing balloon in history -- to the stratosphere, 120,000 feet straight up. He would then, with the help of a specialized space suit and parachute, jump from that perfectly good capsule, breaking the record for the highest skydive and, hopefully, the sound barrier.

As a space enthusiast, I was excited -- am still excited -- by the testing of new technology as we advance both federal and now private space programs. And, you have to admit, it's just pretty doggone cool.

As time ticked by yesterday, the launch kept being postponed. Weather troubles, communication issues, and finally the determination that with the high gusts of wind, it just wasn't safe to do. Because free-falling 120,000 feet is safe. The announcer explained the scrubbing of the day's mission, saying that, because of the balloon, the wind at higher altitudes had to be "negligible" -- about 2 miles per hour, tops.

It's a fragile thing, human ambition.

Paul spends a large portion of 1 Corinthians comparing God and Man. In chapter 1, verse 25, for example, he writes, "For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength."

In other words, when you compare it to God's will, our human ambition doesn't amount to so much, after all. Remember the Tower of Babel? An historical achievement of human ambition -- a massive tower, reaching to the Heavens. And God simply waved His hand and rendered the whole thing undoable, changing the social construct of the entire world, while He was at it. 

As the old saw goes, if you want to hear God laugh, tell Him your plans. Our ambitions, driven as they are by ego,  or by the desire for more money, or more sales of bad-tasting energy drinks, or by whatever, are ultimately meaningless. Only God's ambition for us counts. Only our desire to do His will.