The re-releasing of the movie E.T. on its 20th anniversary brushed the dust off that magical alien story loved by so many. But as one movie critic observed, the storyline has never really retired in the first place. A quick overview of Hollywood’s handiwork over the years shows a consistent fascination with the possibilities of life in outer space.

Scientist Carl Sagan, author of the book on which the movie Contact was based, hosted the first Television program dedicated to the great unknowns of space. The show was an instant hit, viewed by half a billion people. Of the show’s success, Sagan once made the comment: “I was positive from my own experience that an enormous global interest exists in space and in many kindred scientific topics—the origin of life, the Earth, and the Cosmos, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, our connection with the universe.”

Sagan indeed names things of global curiosity. Where did we come from? Are we alone? Throughout each generation, a hunger to know is often matched in force and voraciousness with a hunger for the unknown. The mysteries of our universe can fascinate us, compel us, and give hope. They can also become a point of misperception if sought in and of themselves.

As Ravi Zacharias has observed, there are minds for which no matter how many peripheral questions are answered, the vital ones still elude. The great unknown can be a point of gratitude, a powerful force on the imagination that compels us to seek its giver. It can just as easily become a fixation, the meaning and not the means to finding what is real and true. But the great unknown itself, however great, still begs for a source that is known.

To the Athenian thinkers many years ago, the Apostle Paul spoke words quite fitting for present times. As his eyes scanned that culture, he saw their fascination with knowing—so strong they even ventured to know what was unknown to them. A sign over one of their many altars read, “To the unknown god.” Seeing this, Paul declared to them on Mars Hill that what they were worshipping as unknown, this could be proclaimed to them as known.(1)

The universe is indeed vast and fascinating and there is unmistakably something to our yearning to know we are not alone. As Ted from the movie Contact and Sagan himself noted with curiosity, “If we were alone in this vast universe, it would all be an awful lot of wasted space…”

But what we worship in this world as unknown, Jesus gives us the chance to know, while powerfully reminding us that we are not alone. His notable life, painful death, and jarring resurrection allow us to encounter beauty and mystery, assurance and truth at once. “The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands,” professed Paul, “nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us.(2) We can approach the good mysteries of outer space and inner space with gratitude, for our creator has revealed his face and we are not alone.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) See Acts 17:23.

(2) Acts 17:24-27.