On Christmas Eve 1968, three men had the attention of the civilized world. It is estimated that two billion people watched or listened to the events of Apollo 8, a NASA voyage to the moon. This was more than half the humans alive at the time.
Frank Borman, James Lovell Jr., and William Anders were sent to the moon to identify possible landings for future astronauts. At nearly 5 a.m. on Christmas Eve, these men entered lunar orbit. They left the earth's gravitational pull and were magnetized to the moon, 238,000 miles away.
With the earth to their back, it took their spacecraft nearly three days to reach the moon.
One can only imagine the peculiar feelings of leaving the earth's gravitational pull. Their hopeful return rested in the spacecraft's rockets safely putting them back during the transearth injection.
For 20 hours they orbited the moon. Ten orbits in all, one about every two hours. During the first three times around the moon the window of the spacecraft was pointing downward at the moon's surface.
However, during the fourth orbit, Borman rolled the window of the craft toward the moon's horizon. What they saw, would be the highlight of their journey. According to the transcripts Borman shouted with excitement, "Oh my God, look at that picture. Here's the Earth coming up."
The significant irony of the mission was their awe of the earth, not the moon. Borman would recall seeing the earth for the first time on the horizon: "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 was either black or white, but not the earth."
Christmas Eve night, before leaving lunar orbit, the three astronauts delivered a message to an attentive audience on earth. They took turns reading Genesis 1:1-10: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth...and God saw that it was good." What message would you deliver if you had a majority of the earth's attention? Why do you think they chose the message they did?
About a year later Neil Armstrong would stand on the moon and blot out the earth with his thumb. He was later asked, "Did that make you feel really big?" No he replied, "It made me feel really, really, small."
We are a generation removed from these events in world history. But their significance can never be diminished. The astronaut's wonder of the earth won out over the unique exploration of the moon. God pronounced the earth good and gave it color--more so--importance and purpose.
Maybe it was this importance and purpose that sent a "torrent of nostalgia" in Borman. I believe that torrent of nostalgia resonates in all of us at times. But it is much deeper than longing to be on the earth, like in Borman's case. It is a longing for that heavenly home. Some have called this celestial homesickness, which is a yearning to know from whence we sprang and better understand and hope to return.
No singular event seems to be on the horizon this Christmas Eve, but perhaps we could all flip the page in Genesis and read with our families and friends: "God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them."
Thankfully we have Christmastime to help us each remember that we really, really are important.
And that we really, really have purpose.
Jenkins lives in Layton.
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