Moon Landing Anniversary

Dear Friends

We’ve come a long way since the first moon landing fifty years ago when, you may not recall, the top selling children’s book was “Good Morning Moon”. Without Map Quest, (they did have the Thomas Guide and a few National Geographic Maps) NASA had to launch Apollo 11 at night when there was a full moon, so the astronauts could find it and have plenty of surface on which to land. Now, with GPS, they can go even during the day. And, with improved accuracy, they can land even if there is only a sliver of the moon available to land on! As Huell Howser would say, "Wow! It's amazing!!!"

While you may want to fac chek some of the statements in the first paragraph (I'm just saying what many people are saying!) here is an accurate quote from Michael Collins, the Apollo 11 astronaut who did not get to land on the moon, but had a lot of time to think from his unique perspective:

The earth must become as it appears:

Blue and white, not capitalist or communist

Blue and white, not rich and poor

Blue and white, not envious or envied

One of the activities at the Nixon Library moon landing commemoration tomorrow is the chance to simply sit down and look at the stars in a planetarium exhibit. May God help us pause from time to time, as psalm 8 puts it, to “consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars you have set in their courses…”.  

We can’t experience the perspective of planet earth as the astronauts did. But we can all stop and step back a bit to “ponder anew, what the Almighty can do”. We can all keep trying to make our little part of this world a little more peaceful and a little more kind, not by planting one nation’s flag in one spot, but by spreading widely the love of God who is known by many names, the God whose love I see most clearly in Jesus.

John