The Open Door

There has been much in the news lately about the celebration of the 40th Anniversary of Apollo 11 that landed two men on the moon for the very first time. Through the Internet website WeChoosetheMoon.org, anyone who might be interested could follow the progress of the flight from lift off to return on the same dates forty years later.

You may recall that Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon on July 20, 1969. I was a young pastor in Dabney, Indiana and a student at Southern Seminary. I remember very well watching the historic event with Janice in our seminary apartment on a black and white television we received as a wedding gift the previous year.

Being prompted to remember Apollo 11 caused me to reflect on an earlier Apollo mission, Apollo 8. Frank Borman was the Commander for the Apollo 8 mission that launched on December 21, 1968 and returned to earth December 28. Borman was accompanied on the flight by Jim Lovell and Bill Anders.

The Apollo 8 mission was very significant for numerous reasons. It was the first time men ever left earth orbit. It was not intended as a mission to the moon. It was to be a flight that orbited the earth, but concerns that the Soviets might be first to successfully orbit a man around the moon caused NASA to make the decision to bypass another earth-orbiting mission and go directly for a lunar orbit.

This was also the first time men were launched in the Saturn V rocket. Standing at 363 feet in height, this was a remarkably impressive rocket that was used in successive lunar missions.

People around the world are familiar with the incredible Earthrise photograph that was taken by the crew of Apollo 8. The account of how the photo came to be is interesting. Not until the fourth orbit around the moon did Commander Borman decide to roll the spacecraft so that the windows faced away from the surface of the moon and towards the horizon. He did this in order to get a navigational fix. A few minutes later he spotted a blue-and-white object coming over the horizon.

Transcripts of the Apollo 8 mission reveal the wonder and amazement of the astronauts over what they were seeing. Anders located a camera loaded with black-and-white film and snapped the first picture of earthrise that was ever taken. Then he found a 70mm roll of color film and quickly loaded it into the Hasselblad camera. He then took the magnificent color photograph of earthrise that became one of the most famous photographs of the 20th Century.

Commenting on the sight, Borman said, “It was the most beautiful, heart-catching sight of my life, one that sent a torrent of nostalgia, of sheer homesickness, surging through me. It was the only thing in space that had any color to it. Everything else was either black or white. But not earth.” Jim Lovell said that earth was “a grand oasis in the vast loneliness of space.”

What made Apollo 8 most memorable to me was the Christmas Eve telecast from the space capsule as it orbited the moon. The crew had been instructed by NASA to do something significant. They surely did! The three men took turns reading the creation account from Genesis, chapter one, while their television camera was aimed out the window at the moon passing underneath their spacecraft. Then they led the nation and the world in a prayer of thanks and asking for the guidance of Almighty God for our earth. I was deeply moved by the moment and will cherish the memory of it as long as I live.

The God we know and serve is Creator God. None of our discoveries in the vastness of space are a surprise to God. We can only stand in amazement as we view the heavens and the handiwork of His hands, and, at the same time, know that He loves us.

Certainly one way that He has shown His love is to place us on this awesome blue-and-white planet, that as Lovell said, is “a grand oasis in the vast loneliness of space.”