Yesterday, NASA launched the first spaceship in more than 50 years on a mission to the moon. This launch has been delayed for a number of months and the Artemis program (named after the twin of Apollo) has been plagued with issues, to be sure, but last night, at 6:35 p.m., four astronauts, who have been training for years, took off on a return trip to our nearest celestial neighbor. The crew includes the first woman to make the trip around the moon and, by the way, none of the crew members were even born when the U.S. last visited our heavenly neighbor.
This flight is not scheduled to land on the moon, however it will fly past the moon and then return to earth. It will be the farthest distance mankind has ever travelled from the earth. In a way, it reminds me of the December, 1968 space flight when Frank Borman, James Lovell and William Anders debuted a similar mission that coincided with Christmas Eve. In one of the most memorable moments from space, Borman and his crew mates read the beginning of the creation story to a world tuned in to hear a broadcast while the mission participants were orbiting the moon. This, of course, happened on the eve of the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ.
Among other notable achievements, William Anders famously took the photo that has been deemed the most important photo ever taken – appropriately named, “Earthrise”. It was a photo of the earth appearing in the distance as Apollo 8 came out from the dark side of the moon. I’m sure you have seen it at one time or another.
This was the beginning of the excitement leading up to the Apollo 11 landing on the surface of the moon. Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins were the crew of this historic flight that placed Armstrong, the first man on the moon, with people such as Charles Lindbergh who made the first non-stop transatlantic flight from New York to Paris, where he was warmly greeted upon landing. He was an instant global celebrity.
There have been other notable firsts that we, as a nation, have celebrated with regard to flight. Alan shepherd, the first American in space and John Glenn, the first American to orbit the earth are both good examples. And there have been tragedies as well. The Challenger explosion, the Apollo 1 fire that claimed the lives of Grissom, White and Chaffee are examples where the nation mourned the loss of some of the best and brightest of their generation. Such is the risk of pushing boundaries into the unknown.
Our son, Andrew, and I were texting as Artemis was in its final countdown. He made the comment to me that nobody has headed to the moon during his entire lifetime. I had never considered that. In fact, none of our children had been born yet. Even stranger was the fact that Janet and I weren’t married until 1973, the year AFTER the last moonshot! So now we have the opportunity to challenge another generation of Americans to go above and beyond what we were able to accomplish so many years ago. And who knows? Just maybe we will get to Mars in our lifetimes.
Our verse for this evening is from the psalms. The author of Psalm 8 speaks of the creation of the cosmos and that mankind is even more important to God than the grandeur of the moon and the stars. The psalmist tells us, in Psalm 8:3-9, “When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet: all flocks and herds, and the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas. O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”
My encouragement this evening is that God created the heavens and the earth, with earth being the perfect “nest” for mankind to co-exist with God in the Garden of Eden, where God walked with Adam. My prayer is that the crew of Artemis II will safely return to earth, having successfully concluded its mission – another milestone in our eventual travel to Mars, the Red Planet, possibly in our lifetimes. Have a great day in the Lord, grace and peace…