Where were you when they landed on the moon?

I can remember exactly what I was doing the day they were preparing to land on the moon.  My mum had to call the doctor out as I had a raging throat infection.  Hard to remember a time when doctors made house calls; they’ve gone forever  now in the manner of Green Shield stamps, Spangles and Simon Dee.

We had all been watching the extraordinary events unfolding before our eyes, would men really walk on the moon?  As the doorbell rang, my mum  snapped off the television lest the doctor think we were all time wasters and shirkers after all he was a professional.  Thankfully he took in the scene with a glance: my dad still in the ‘viewing’ position, my brother and I with crestfallen faces, the cathode ray tube still hot enough to toast something.  Besides,  he clearly had no intention of missing it himself.  Diplomatically he said it was history in the making and we children (nice touch!) should be witnessing it.  My dad had the TV on in one movement, the moon landing happened and (more importantly!) I was given a course of antibiotics.

For a while the only impact it had on me was an enthusiasm for science fiction as opposed to fact.   2001: A Space Odyssey produced so much CO2 from the pontificating amongst my aficionado friends that Kyoto might have got in touch;  had it been around then.

Forty years on we are still contemplating the enormity of what happened (and I do believe it did despite the conspiracy theorists though I’ll admit Capricorn One is a highly entertaining film).  In an age where they had problems building reliable washing machines, a primitive craft took men to the moon and brought them back.  Not only primitive but downright flimsy as though it were collaborative effort between NASA and Blue Peter.

The men who went to the moon seemed to find it difficult to translate what they had experienced into cohesive expression.  It was the astronauts with Christian beliefs or at least with some real sense of God, knowing their own words to be  hopelessly inadequate who turned to the Bible for inspiration.    Apollo 8  in 1968 was the first manned mission to escape earth’s gravitational field.   As a result it was the first time anyone had a chance to view our world from the perspective of another planet.   The  astronauts timed the live broadcast to coincide with a full view of planet earth in all its luminous beauty hanging against the vast blackness of space.  Their response was to give God the glory, taking it in turns to read the creation story from Genesis.

Buzz Aldrin on his return journey from the moon contemplating the amazing sight of our small blue planet was reminded of the words from Psalm 8, 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……’  I can only say Amen to that.

For more mind blowing information about God the ‘Star Breather’, I recommend How Great is our God, one of a series of DVDs by Louie Giglio, pastor/evangelist Passion Conferences.