One not-too-long-ago Fourth of July, I binge-watched the History Channel’s documentary series on The American Revolution. It felt right at the time, so this year, I flipped over to the channel only to find a marathon of shows about UFOs and aliens.

What happened to regular old history? Did revisionist history disown the documentary I had watched? How did 1776 get swapped out for the 76th annual UFO Festival in Roswell, New Mexico?

And now news of a bipartisan congressional investigation into Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, promising no more government coverups of whatever.

I never watched the "X-Files," but I still remember their tagline, “The truth is out there.”

A few days more into July, I was at lunch with a couple friends and one of them asked if we thought UFOs could be for real. The discussion brought to mind years back, when I participated in the contemporary book group at the Wheaton Public Library, and we read Mary Dorria Russell’s The Sparrow. We did not usually get into overt theological discussions, but with this book many of the others said that if another species was discovered from another part of the universe that it would shake or destroy their faith in God. If there are aliens, that means that we are not the center of the created world.

But why does that matter so much that people said it would destroy their faith?

After all, the Bible has angels and fallen angels, sometimes appearing in the sky. Their existence does not threaten my place in the cosmos.

What would Congress and the media and modern science make of a sky suddenly filled with multitudes of the heavenly host singing words we understand: Glory to God in the highest and on earth . . .

It’s a far cry from greenish beings with oversized eyes who don’t speak our language. Those angels would never be mistaken for weather balloons or spy satellites. They would completely upend these modern out-of-this-world appearances that have wrought conferences and people devoting their lives to collect and study and develop theories about the universe.

Yes, there might be alien life out there, but the most alien of all has already come, and his name is Jesus.

What could be more alien in a created world than the Creator who made it to somehow become a part of it. How is that even possible? How does the Maker become the made?

Even more alien than that is the Creator submitting to his creation as they brutally murder him.

What does it say of his creation that killing him is what they would do?

Then, for his death to atone for their wrongdoing?

And that he should come back to life, bringing redemption to the fallen created beings.

I long for this alien being, for his love that is the opposite of what I know apart from him. I long for him to break through the atmosphere and crash land on barren desert lands. And then I realize that he already has. And the emptiness of my desolate soul can be filled with something altogether new that transforms me into his likeness, as alien as that might be.

It’s Christmas in July. Wait. It’s Christmas and Easter in July. It’s so otherworldly that if I didn’t know better, I would think it’s science fiction.

I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made. Who, for us men and for our salvation, came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; he suffered and was buried; and the third day he rose again, according to the Scriptures; and ascended into heaven, and sits on the right hand of the Father; and he shall come again, with glory, to judge the living and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end.