Moon Shots

There has been a heightened emphasis on space recently, with the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing being celebrated.  And, the thoughts of space can remind us of the incredible expanse
of God's handiwork and of the greatness of the Lord Himself. Jeremiah 23 says:
23 "Am I a God near at hand," says the Lord, "And not a God afar off?
24 Can anyone hide himself in secret places, So I shall not see him?" says the Lord; "Do I not fill heaven and earth?" says the Lord.

He fills heaven and earth because He created heaven and earth.  The universe belongs to Him and all is running meticulously according to His design.  Even the positioning of the earth in this solar system, enabling life to survive, is a testimony to His hand - certainly not random, but a product of His divine order.  We can know that He brings order to us as we seek His face and trust His Word - in the randomness of human frailty, we can know the security of a powerful God.

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We serve a great and mighty God; He is the Creator of the universe, and He has made you and me.
And, there is nowhere we can go where He is not there. Psalm 139 says:
7 Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence?
8 If I ascend into heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there.
9 If I take the wings of the morning, And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
10 Even there Your hand shall lead me, And Your right hand shall hold me.

There has been quite the amount of coverage surrounding the 50th anniversary of the first landing of astronauts on the moon on July 20, 1969.  And, it gives us a chance to do our own exploration of possible faith connections to the moon and those who landed on its surface.

We are aware of Neil Armstrong's first steps on the lunar surface, and the "one small step for man" and "one giant leap for mankind."  But, what occurred some 25 years later in his life bears some incredible significance.  A Townhall.com column by Jonathan Feldstein reports:

When Armstrong visited Israel in 1994 he was brought to a place in the Old City of Jerusalem and asked Meir Ben-Dov, his host and noted archeologist, if Jesus himself actually would have walked there.

“I told him, ‘Look, Jesus was a Jew,'” recalled Ben-Dov. “These are the steps that lead to the Temple, so he must have walked here many times.”

He asked Ben-Dov if those were the original steps, which he answered in the affirmative.  Armstrong stated, "I have to tell you...I am more excited stepping on these stones than I was stepping on the moon.”

That certainly puts things in perspective, doesn't it?   A man who had traveled thousands of miles in space, who will be known forever as the first man to step on the moon, recognized the weight of walking in the footsteps of Jesus.

Armstrong's colleague, Buzz Aldrin, had a holy moment on the surface of the moon itself, celebrating Holy Communion and reading Scripture.  He is quoted as saying, according to FoxNews.com:

"I wondered if it might be possible to take communion on the moon," Aldrin recalled a year after the mission, "symbolizing the thought that God was revealing Himself there, too, as man reached out into the universe. For there are many of us in the NASA program who do trust that what we are doing is part of God’s eternal plan for man."

This was taken from a 1970 piece in Guideposts magazine.  Aldrin recalled: "In the radio blackout I opened the little plastic packages which contained bread and wine," adding, "I poured the wine into the chalice our church had given me. In the one-sixth gravity of the moon, the wine curled slowly and gracefully up the side of the cup. It was interesting to think that the very first liquid ever poured on the moon, and the first food eaten there, were communion elements."

Aldrin also silently read from John 15:5, "As Jesus said: I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me, and I in Him, will bear much fruit; for you can do nothing without me.”

The Communion practice was done during a radio blackout, due to a lawsuit that noted atheist Madilyn Murray O'Hair had filed against NASA after the Apollo 8 astronauts read the first 10 chapters of Genesis from space.

Oh, and about that lawsuit - when it was filed, a group called the Apollo Prayer League swung into action to defend the astronauts.  ReligionNews.com reports that: 

The League eventually accrued more than 8 million signatures and letters championing the religious freedom of astronauts, according to Wired.

The group was formed years earlier by NASA’s then-chaplain, a scientist and Presbyterian minister named John Maxwell Stout, and his wife, Helen, in the wake of the Apollo 1 fire that killed three astronauts. The final wishes of one of the felled astronauts, Ed White II, included putting a Bible on the moon, a mission Stout took up in his honor.

White's wish did eventually come true, thanks to the Prayer League, which made microfilm versions of the Bible. Religion News reports that it took several attempts to get them to the moon: the singular microfilm Bible ended up on the wrong module in Apollo 12 and Apollo 13's microfilm Bible, said to have been presented by then-Representative George H.W. Bush, never made it due to the mission's malfunction.

So, as the story goes: "Astronaut Edgar Mitchell, however, managed to lug 100 microfilm Bibles to the surface of the moon with him during the Apollo 14 mission and returned them to Earth."  Those Bibles have become quite valuable and have been the source of dispute.  For instance, a Tulsa, OK woman named Carol Mersch ended up with 10 of them after a bidding war with the state of Texas, according to the Tulsa World.  Mersch donated one to the Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC, where it is on display.

And, we recognize that the moon gives testimony to God our Creator.  Danny Faulkner of Answers in Genesis writes:

Since each day of Creation Week was a normal day, the moon could not have formed through some gradual process, but rather was made very rapidly. In light of special creation, it isn’t surprising that lunar characteristics defy any gradual, evolutionary explanations.

In fact, we might expect the moon to have unique characteristics unlike any other object in the solar system. For instance, most moons orbit their planet’s equator, but not the Earth’s moon. Our moon is the only one that orbits close to the ecliptic—the plane of the planet’s orbit around the sun. This orbit, along with the moon’s uniquely high mass relative to the earth, stabilizes the Earth’s rotation axis at 23.5 degrees. Without this stabilizing influence, the Earth would wobble erratically, wreaking havoc on our seasons. Instead, we have regular seasons by God’s wise design.

Some considerations for us today:

Space travel is a testimony to mankind's knowledge, which in and of itself is a gift from God.  Space itself is a testimony to God's greatness.  The Bible says that the heavens declare the glory of God, and the moon is actually a significant part of creation, made by God on the fourth day of creation.  And, as Jay Schabacker shared on the show last week, scientific discoveries are consistent with the story of creation and its Creator.

The Bible warns against our being "puffed up" by knowledge.  In their own ways, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin recognized that there were more important things than just travelling through space. They can remind us of the priorities of our own lives - we can be challenged to put God first and to allow His knowledge to guide and influence our own human understanding.  We all have gifts and abilities, and it's so important that we recognize that these are tools given to us through which we glorify God.   I can spin the controls, sort of speak, or speak into a microphone, in a radio studio, but I also recognize that He intends this ability to be used to bring glory to Him.