Let me unpack my rather cryptic title. Bob Dylan was quite right to sing in 1964 about our changing times. And what I discuss here involves two things: something that millions of people have been following, and something that only a small group of those who have been following me will know about.
So enough mystery. I have just now watched the Artemis II crew return from their 10-day mission around the moon and splash down near San Diego, and viewed the four astronauts being removed from the capsule and taken to safety. It was amazing to watch and something so many wanted desperately to watch, given all the interest and prayers sent up to heaven for these four brave crew men and women.
I made a point of getting up this morning and having the TV on a good hour or so before the splashdown was scheduled to take place. And as one commentator after another remarked, it was a flawless re-entry, as was the entire mission. They took off on April 1, went further into space than any other human beings have ever done, circling the moon, and returning to earth with almost zero problems.
As an American, I was justly proud of what NASA and all the others have achieved, and of another clear example of American greatness. But I say all this because of some major changes – not just in space exploration technology, but in my own life.
When the Apollo 7 to 11 missions took place back in the late 1960s, I was fully into my radical hippy lifestyle. Drugs, rock music and anti-Americanism characterised my life back then. So I had no interest in what NASA was up to back then. Indeed, when the Apollo 11 mission took place on July 16–24, 1969, with the first humans landing on the Moon, I had no interest whatsoever.
While millions of people worldwide were glued to their television sets to watch this historic moment, I was doing what I usually did back then: walking to a friend’s house to do dope and rock out. At least I think that was what I did when they first stepped onto the Moon. Too much drug-taking back then when I was a teenager clouded much of my memory.
And being a hardcore lefty, I had my stock tropes to use when people asked me incredulously why I was not interested in all this: ‘The money should not be wasted on going to the moon but in feeding the poor.’ Of course I had no real interest in helping the poor, but that was the line the hard left had to take about such matters.
What changed?
So what I missed out on big time back in August 1969 I made up for this week, and especially this morning. Obviously a big change had occurred since those wild hippy days – it was a change in me. Some two years after the Apollo 11 mission I became a Christian.
All the drugs and radicalism and rebellion and aimless, reckless living left me despondent and suicidal. Had all the drugs not killed me off, suicide would likely have. I was in a real bad way, so when I finally heard the gospel message presented to me, I leapt at the chance of turning my life around.
With so much upheaval in my life happening after August 1971, needless to say I had a big change of heart and mind on most things – including space exploration. As I say, I am now proud of what was achieved here, and as with so many others, thankful that our prayers were answered and the crew has returned safely to earth.
I look forward to a proposed moon landing in 2028 and then plans for missions to Mars. But as amazing as all these breakthroughs are with science and technology, even more amazing are the breakthroughs that God can bring about in the life of a human being.
Jesus Christ took me, a lost, messed-up drug-addict and turned me into a new person. There is no greater miracle than that. As Leonard Ravenhill once put it: “The greatest miracle that God can do today is to take an unholy man out of an unholy world, and make that man holy and put him back into that unholy world and keep him holy in it.”
To quote another line from another famous rock song from back then, ‘what a long strange trip it’s been’ (“Truckin’” by the Grateful Dead, 1970). When I was a messed up hippy teenager in Wisconsin back then, little did I know that Christ would reach down into my life and fully redirect my entire trajectory.
That included meeting an Australian gal while in Holland and moving here permanently back in 1989. This article, this website, and this ministry that God has given me, were all fully unknown to me in those early years. All I can do now as I look back over my long life is to say this: Soli Deo Gloria (‘To God alone, the glory’).
Postscript
A friend (thanks John C.) just alerted me to this terrific addition to the story:
The pilot of the Artemis II mission to the moon is a committed Christian and Sunday school teacher who realises the spiritual significance of it happening over the Easter Holy Week. Captain Victor Glover, who is a member of a US Protestant congregation known as the Church of Christ, has taken a Bible with him among his personal items. Ahead of the first manned mission to the moon in more than 50 years, the NASA astronaut said: “We need Jesus — whether we’re here on Earth or orbiting the moon.” https://vision.org.au/read/news/christian-astronaut-heads-to-the-moon/
