Astronaut offers out-of-world perspective

ST. LOUIS – The ancient people of the Levant – present day Syria, Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories – believed their gods lived on a massive mountain in the north. The Canaanites called it Mount Zaphon, and to them it represented the heavens.

A thousand years later, the author of Job referred to the Canaanite mountain as a way to explain God’s creation of the cosmos.

“He stretches out Zaphon over the void,” Job explains, “and hangs the earth upon nothing.”

Job’s image often ran through the mind of Col. Jeffrey Williams as he looked down on Earth during two missions on the International Space Station.

“Any space traveler who has seen the Earth from orbit completely understands” Job’s words, Williams writes in his new book of photographs, “The Work of His Hands: A View of God’s Creation from Space.”

“When one views the Earth from orbit through the window of a spacecraft for the first time – and perhaps, most every time – it is normal to be struck by the (obvious) reality that the Earth is a ball in the vastness of space,” he continues. “It is one thing to know that academically, quite another to view it. God really does suspend the Earth on nothing!”

Williams, 52, and his wife Anna-Marie, visited St. Louis recently for the launch of his book, which was published by St. Louis-based Concordia Publishing House.

Williams became an astronaut in 1996, and flew on the Space Shuttle – a 10-day mission – in 2000. In 2006, he was a member of Expedition 13 to the International Space Station where he lived for six months with Russian cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov. He just returned in March from another long stay on the space station. His total of 362 days in space puts Williams just over two weeks shy of the duration record.

The space station orbits the Earth every 90 minutes, and with each orbit Earth rotates 22 degrees. That gives space station residents a different view with each trip around the globe.

Williams orbited the Earth more than 2,800 times on Expedition 13, catching 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets every 24 hours. The astronaut took his camera along and took more photos from space than any astronaut in history.

A typical feeling – described by many astronauts – upon looking back at Earth from space is one of smallness, even insignificance.

“I don’t share that perspective,” Williams said. “To me it was very humbling – a feeling of humbling significance.”

Williams grew up on a farm in Wisconsin, where the church was a part of life, he said, but he and Anna-Marie really “gained our faith in Christ” in 1987 after a crisis in their marriage.

That faith gave Williams a unique platform from which to observe the Earth, hanging upon nothing. Despite the vastness of the universe Williams experienced, especially during two space walks, he said his faith teaches him that God considers human beings special, not small.

“Christianity is about what God has done for us through our faith in him,” Williams said. “To him, we are incredibly significant.”

Anna-Marie said she, too, was able to connect spiritually with the immensity of the universe through her husband’s space walks.

“I remember recognizing that he was in that nothingness God created,” she said. “And that he could just look around for a minute and really feel that void referenced in the Bible.”

During Williams’ missions, husband and wife occasionally pray together over the phone, she on the ground in Texas, and he 225 miles above.

His book documents the peace in one astronaut’s mind between the often dueling fields of faith and science.

“Good science and the Bible are consistent,” Williams said. “I don’t see any conflict there.”

That was Williams’ message recently to about 30 third- and fourth-graders assembled at St. Louis University High for “NASA: Journey to Outer Space,” a day camp program hosted by the St. Louis Science Center and Mad Science of St. Louis.

The questions Williams fielded were light on theology, and heavy on what kind of food astronauts eat (dehydrated, canned and ready-to-eat) and whether he’d experienced any “close calls.” (He hasn’t.)

One question: “Is it scary, cool or boring in space?”

Answer: “It’s very cool.”