Moon Landing Musings

Human beings first walked on the moon fifty years ago.  It’s surprising what I remember about that event.  I even grasped the importance of the event or at least I grasped as much as a seven year old kid could grasp the importance of anything.  (I will pause for a moment and allow you to do the math to figure out my age.)

I remember very distinctly the weekend of the moon landing because my Dad took my sister and me to watch the Braves. I remember that we stayed in an Atlanta hotel rather than driving back to Macon after each game.

 I remember my mom hung back at the hotel on Friday night and didn’t go to the game but went to the Saturday night game.  I even remember the Braves swept a double header from the San Diego Padres on Friday night and beat the Padres in a single game on Saturday. 

On Sunday, we actually skipped church, something we never did, and drove home to watch the moon landing on television.

So it was on that Sunday evening we settled down in front of our television.  We watched as Neil Armstrong walked down the steps from the lunar landing module and stepped on the surface of the moon.

I was terrified to be honest.  I was afraid that there was going to be something on the moon that was going to zap him into nothingness the minute that he stepped on the lunar surface.  I remember very distinctly the relief I felt when nothing happened. 

Being only seven years of age, Armstrong safely walking around on the moon was enough for me to see.  I was satisfied and went to bed.  I don’t remember what my mother or sister did but Dad stayed fixated in front of the television until Armstrong and his companion Buzz Aldrin went back inside the lunar landing module.

Now fifty years later with some perspective and hopefully some maturity, I can reflect on what happened.  To land the Armstrong and Aldrin on the moon and return them to earth safely was an effort of monumental proportions.  It took great commitment to make it a reality, from our political leadership, to the work of the engineers and scientists, and of course the contributions of the astronauts themselves.  Without being committed to the task the moon landing would have been impossible.

According to Charles Fishman, author of “One Giant Leap: The Impossible Mission That Flew us to the Moon,” each hour the Apollo astronauts were in flight required a million hours of work on the ground from things such as engineering, design, construction guidance and basic manual labor. 

Fishman notes that the average American works one hundred thousand hours in a lifetime; therefore, each hour of flight of the Apollo astronauts consumed ten Americans entire working career.

This leads to the observation that little if anything is ever accomplished by one person going at it alone.  It takes a team.  Sure Neal Armstrong was the first person to set foot on the moon but there were millions of hours of work performed by countless persons to make that “one small step” a reality. 

What a difference it would make in the shared life of our society if that great truth was realized.

In the tenth chapter of the book of Luke we find the story of Jesus sending seventy of his followers out into the towns and villages in the area in which he was intending to do ministry.  Let’s make sure we get the picture here---Jesus who performed countless miracles, healed countless people and even raised people from the dead, relied on a team.

Not only did Jesus send out 70 of his followers he sent them out in pairs.  No one traveled alone.  The witness of scripture is fairly clear; God wants us to work together.

The world in which we live battles numerous issues that make life less than it should be for many persons.  As I reflect on some of the issues of our day I sometimes think to myself, “If we can put a man on the moon surely we can figure out how to _______________.”

 I’ll let each of you who read this blog fill in that blank.  These things said, there were two intangible qualities that landed Neal Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon, commitment and cooperation.  Perhaps if those things were more evident in our public life things could be accomplished that make landing on the moon seem trivial.