I realized this morning I wrote this a while back and forgot to publish it
I was sitting on the couch reading a book a few months ago when my wife told me Neil Armstrong died. I can’t say that it affected me emotionally, because I clearly didn’t know him. I was one year old when he and Buzz Aldrin touched down on the moon’s powdery surface.
I took to the interwebs to find more info, and I saw a link from Eric Metaxas (the author of Bonhoeffer and Amazing Grace) on Twitter about the lunar landing, and it caught my interest because it wasn’t about the typical “One small step for man…” speech.
What I found out was Armstrong took communion on the moon, and that blew my mind. As Metaxas pointed out, some of the first words spoken on the moon were the words of Jesus Christ.
They weren’t broadcast over the radio, though Armstrong was prepared to. At the last minute he was told not to do it because of the legal battle NASA was already fighting over some scripture the Apollo 8 crew read from Genesis.
Yet Armstrong nonetheless took communion, and read from the scripture. On the surface of the moon, before they stepped out of the lander. That’s pretty amazing.
You can read Eric’s excellent blog here
A Work in Progress 