Amazing!

Throughout the decade of the 1960s our nation stopped for the comings and goings of the space program. Mercury, Gemini, and finally Apollo launches were broadcast on live TV.

On Sunday, July 20, 1969, Wanda and I were living in Laurel, Maryland, in our first one-bedroom apartment. We had been married about six months. That night we watched as Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. Amazing! After setting up a movie camera on the surface of the moon, the astronauts went back into the spacecraft for rest. I just laid there in the bed and watched as the Lunar Lander just sat there on the moon. Amazing!

We don't watch space travel any more. National priorities have changed, but even before they did, TV had long since quit broadcasting departures and returns from space. We had all moved on. Space travel was old hat, treated with a yawn rather than awe. Amazing!

The International Space Station is more than thirteen years old now and during that time there has been:

• 89 Russian launches
• 37 Space Shuttle launches
• 1 test flight and 2 operational flights by SpaceX's Dragon
• 3 Japanese High Transport Vehicles
• 3 European Automated Transfer Vehicles
• 174 space walks in support of the space station

These have passed almost without notice. Amazing!

In places where it has been long known, the story of Jesus sometimes gets the same reaction. It's commonplace, met with a "Yes-we-know-all-about-that" ho hum response. But, stop and think...

Back in the first century, A. D. people were excited about Jesus. They followed Him everywhere he went, in huge numbers. He talked to them in a way that no one ever had before. He placed more emphasis on the eternal nature of humanity than they could comprehend. He had compassion on them and raised their dead and healed their sick. Amazing!

God, through his Son, Jesus, created the universe.. He blesses our needs and offers his friendship. Yet, over and over, we insist on our own way. We resist his will and shun his overtures. Amazingly, he sticks with us, always pleading, always working, always blessing. Amazing!

Just think. Jesus, the Son, who was in the form of God gave up his equality and lived as man; a humble man; a serving man. He had to die on a cross for his trouble. For the precious blood He shed and the life he gave on that cross we can have forgiveness of sins and reconciliation to God, our creator! And we sometimes, hardly give it a thought. Simply amazing!!!