With Scriptural Accompaniment
May 12, 2011 (Thursday)
Christmas Eve, 1968, and our Apollo 8 astronauts are orbiting the moon. Suddenly the earth seems to rise above the moon’s horizon and a brief conversation ensued:
Borman: Oh my God! Look at that picture over there! Here’s the Earth coming up. Wow, is that pretty.
Anders: Hey, don’t take that, it’s not scheduled.
Borman: (laughing) You got a color film, Jim?
Anders: Hand me that roll of color quick, will you…
Here’s a copy of the original Earth-rise, taken by William Anders. This was the first time in history that human eyes had seen this marvelous scene.
The crew of Apollo 8 read in turn from the Book of Genesis as they orbited the moon. William Anders, Jim Lovell, and Frank Borman recited Chapter 1, Verses 1 through 10, using the King James Version text. It began, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
That was more than 42 years ago. To those of us who tuned in to that broadcast, it hardly seems possible that it could have been that long ago.
The world keeps changing, but much remains the same. Then it was Vietnam. Today it is somewhere else. Terrorism, which once was a problem only in foreign countries, is now in the forefront of our daily news here in America. The good news that the principal terrorist leader will no longer be a threat is tempered by the feeling that the worst is yet to come.
Perhaps now would be a good time to get “back to the Bible.”