I was reflecting the other day on the Apollo 11 mission to the moon. I am sure that if you were alive in 1969 you know exactly where you were on that day in July when Neil Armstrong left that LEM and stepped on to the surface of the moon, saying those now famous words, “That’s one small step for [a] man and one giant leap for mankind.” I sure know where I was! A little background first.
My mother was born in a little town in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan called Ishpeming. Just so you know the UP, as it is known to its residents, is the part of the state that is north of Wisconsin and is only connected to ‘lower Michigan’ by the Mackinaw Bridge. It is beautiful country. Filled with cold water fishing streams and forests, which if not what they once were, are still massive and majestic. You are probably thinking what does this have to do with Apollo 11 and the moon? The thing is, we, meaning my family, spent most of our summer vacations in Upper Michigan and that is where most of us were on July 20, 1969.
But what makes it even more memorable is that on the days prior to and at the exact moment we were not watching it on TV but only had a small radio to follow this momentous event. A couple of years before we had built my father’s dream, a log cabin in a clearing in the woods 100’ from the shore of the Switezer Basin. To me, a kid who lived 5 miles from the newly built Ohara Airport. In the noisy, fast moving suburbs of Chicago, this place was a little piece of heaven. We were ‘roughing it’!
The cabin had 4 log walls, a concrete floor, an old wood cook stove and best of all no electricity. So as Neil Armstrong was stepping off the most modern and sophisticated invention of man so far, I sat near a flickering oil lamp and struggled to hear a weak signal from a transistor radio while most of the world huddled around their televisions and experienced the miracle of our time, a man on the moon. But to me then and to me today it could have not been a more perfect moment. And every part of that memory lives with me even 50 years later. The smell and sound of the wood burning in the stove. The crackling of the already distorted transmission coming from the radio. The excitement in my father’s eyes. Not one thing has faded.
So why do I share this with you today? I guess part of it is my amazement at how the world has changed since that day, not so long ago. Back then in the years before cell phones and the internet we were a different breed of people. After traveling this past summer with two of our grandkids I cannot imagine them huddled around a transistor radio. We have made so many technological advances with many of them finding their origins in our drive to be the first nation to place its flag on the moon. It begs the question, was it worth what has come as a result?
But even more than the reflections of an old guy who sees the goldenness of my youth being sullied by the modern world, I see the fulfillment of Bible prophecy. Did you know that the prophet Daniel spoke of this time in a book that was written six centuries before Jesus was born? Listen to this, “But you, Daniel, shut up the words and seal the book, until the time of the end. Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase.” (Daniel 12:4) Doesn’t that sound like our world today? People hurrying and seemingly without direction and our knowledge increasing, at least technologically, at a pace so fast that the phone you bought last month is already outdated. In less than 120 years we have gone from horse drawn carts to self-driving cars. I won’t even speak of the environmental and political condition of our world. Isn’t it enough to make you want to take a deep breath and find a place of peace and hope?
I don’t know about you, but I sure feel it! And for me there is only one source that offers both peace in our hectic world and hope that there is more to this life than reality television and Netflix, it is the Bible. Yeah, I know there are a ton of people who can tell you all the things that are wrong about this book. In my years as a ‘God hater’ I espoused them all. But that was before I allow this book to become an absolute part of my daily life. When I was open to that I learned, “Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path.” (Psalm 119:105) or that, “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. (Hebrews 4:12) No other book can claim that and no other book has changed more lives than this one that is so scorned by the modern nay-sayers.
My thought is only you can take the time to prove or disprove the power of God’s Word. You don’t even need to go out and buy a Bible. They are free and you can download it on that device you carry with you everywhere. So, if you too see the signs around you and need better answers than you can find on Wikipedia, maybe today you can open the greatest book ever written. Give it a try.
I know this is kind of a strange blog that seems like a bunch of wandering thoughts. But to tell you the truth that is what most of my writings are. I truly cherish the past and love the memories of things like the landing on the moon. But today I cherish even more the idea of the soon coming of Jesus Christ. I want to be ready for that and want you to be also. It is all in the book, what have you got to lose.
Blessings
John
8/20/19
