A week from tomorrow, the launch window opens for Perseverance Rover’s journey to Mars. My journey began many years ago at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. I led a team that was early in development of what is now one of the instruments (SHERLOC) that will work from the robotic arm of Perseverance to discover more about the composition of the Martian minerals and organic materials, and now I am a member of its science team. I am also keeping a weather eye on the Martian environment as a member of another instrument suite aboard Perseverance called the Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer (MEDA). If our launch is successful, Perseverance will touch down on Mars on February 18^th of next year.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this mission to Mars and how it intersects with my mission as a Christian. You see, whether lay or ordained, we all have a mission—our heritage as followers of Jesus. How we carry out the vocation—our individual missions as Jesus followers—is unique to each one of us. My own formation as a Christian and quest to find my vocation has been a long and rambling exploration. I kept praying for a teacher or guide to help me figure out who I am, and it didn’t dawn on me for decades, that exploration itself WAS my vocation. I am an explorer-priest, and my vocation is to use both the exploration of creation and the exploration of relationships in God’s Kingdom to learn better how to live into the promise inherent with being made in the Image of God.

While I look forward to another opportunity to explore an alien landscape over the next few years, I’m even more enthusiastic about continuing to explore the Kingdom of God by pooling the things I learn about nature with the things I learn about God and God’s people in order to be a more faithful follower of Jesus. I invite you all to explore your own path. At any age, we can make a mid-course correction if we realize we are called to go a different way in the here and now or going forward into the future.

The times have abruptly changed us as Church, but that does not mean our commission as Christians is any different than it ever was. How we live that vocation evolves over time; that is a hallmark of living things, and the fact that our relationship with God is a living thing is proof that God is near, all around us and active in the world through us. Seize the day and your best life!