Earn this

 As we enter the Memorial Day weekend for 2023, I wanted to share for a moment a word I had heard in my psyche from a powerful scene in a movie most all of us have seen and are familiar with.

The epic Saving Private Ryan tells a story based partially in a real instance, but it is one that underscores the value and sanctity our country gives to the heritage of a family, and how important lineage is.

The U.S. Navy had a tradition of not allowing siblings to serve together, but for some reason they acquiesced when they insisted they all five serve together on the same ship.  The Sullivan brothers, from Waterloo, Iowa all enlisted 3 January, 1942, in the shadow of course of Pearl Harbor. Tragically all were lost when their light cruiser U.S.S. Juneau was torpedoed during the Battle of Guadalcanal in November of that year. 

U.S.S. Juneau seen here. 

  The vessel was struck by a torpedo and in less than 20 seconds, sank in what came to be known as "Iron Bottom Sound" to give you an idea of the carnage that small area saw during savage battles in the south Pacific.

A strict policy was and has been since enforced to ensure a tragedy like this is unlikely to happen again, as was the standing order to evacuate any sole remaining sons in combat.  The stage was set for a SGT Frederick Niland, who's lost a brother when he was shot down in Burma in May, 1944, and during D-Day he lost brothers Robert and Preston. During the chaos following the landings and air-dops into France,  SGT Niland had disappeared somewhere in the morass of the battlefields around Normandy.

Stephen Spielberg took screenwriter Robert Rodat's fictional story and made it an epic tale of courage and sacrifice.  It showed the reality each of these young men faced, all with their own perspective and personality, making the sacrifices even more compelling.

Near the end of the movie where the men are defending the last intact bridge leading into Germany, CPT Miller, played by Tom Hanks, is mortally wounded ironically by the very German he set free during an earlier scene. As he sits, waiting for the inevitable, he summons his last breath to honor all who served under his command and had lost their lives, and whispers into  Ryan's ear: 

"Earn this- earn it"

My first reaction was what a truly cruel and daunting task he placed on this young man, PVT James Ryan, played by Matt Damon.  But over time as I reflected, it dawned on me that  

WE ALL ARE PRIVATE RYAN.  

Or we should be.

What we have is precious, and it is because of the brave that we are the land of the free.  Reflect on this and remember why we celebrate this day- for those who could not return home.

John 15:13:  

Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.

Thanks to the support of Paul Allen (co founder of Microsoft) Juneau's final resting place was found in March 2018. The violence of her explosion left the bow and stern next to each other and the midsection nearly 1 km away, some 13,000 feet below the surface. 

So, so far from Iowa...

The First Broadcast from the Moon

 On this day, Christmas Eve, in 1968, the crew of Apollo 8 became the first humans to orbit our nearest neighbor, the moon. Astronauts Frank Borman (Commander)  Jim Lovell (Command Module Pilot), & William Anders (Lunar Module Pilot) undertook this historic journey to make their marks in history and pave the way for the actual landing on the moon by Apollo 11 the following year.  

Apollo 8 crew from left to right Lovell, Anders, Borman

On their ninth orbit, the crew began their second television broadcast from the cabin of the command module.  Each took a turn to describe what they were seeing and experiencing. Borman reportedly said it was ".. a vast, lonely, forbidding expanse of nothing". Once these comments were complete, Anders stated the crew had a message to share with the people of Earth. 

Each read a portion of the creation story in Genesis with the following transcript:

Bill Anders

We are now approaching lunar sunrise, and for all the people back on Earth, the crew of Apollo 8 has a message that we would like to send to you.

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.^[*]

Jim Lovell

And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.^[*]

Frank Borman

And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.

And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas – and God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth.^(*)

It is hard to imagine how fast and far we have fallen from the ability to give God credit publicly and in conjunction with a government agency like NASA while broadcasting to the entire world. To be an astronaut you had to be elite, an upper echelon in intellect and decision making. Not all were Christians, but it is clear here in this case at least, these 3 men were humbled by their mission. They realized the impact on humanity this program would have and thus used it as a platform to give God the glory. May we all learn from this and repeat it.

Merry Christmas

Apollo 8's reading of Genesis

(*) Woods, David; O'Brien, Frank (December 27, 2008), "Day 4: Lunar Orbits 7, 8 and 9:" The Apollo 8 Flight Journal  NASA History Division

How Powerful is the Omnipotent One?

 While doing some research on the scientific basis for the existence of God, I came across a document originally written by Peter W. Stoner some time ago (Science Speaks, Online Edition), and has been revised since it's original publication. In the article, Stoner explains the mathematical likelihood of the 13 events of Creation being correctly recorded in the right order and explains the importance of this sequence being in the correct order, and how it confirms what scientists have since discovered. (I find the latter rather humorous) 

He then goes on to explain the power that is in the suns of the universe and it really stopped me dead in my tracks to reconsider my opinion of God, and ask- "Just HOW powerful is He?"

All believers probably say much the same thing that He is all powerful, knowing, present etc. He knows the stars by name (Psalm 147:4) and the hairs on my head are numbered (Matthew 10:30).  These are concepts that we are familiar with and are not hard to appreciate, that is, until you start to try to appreciate just what these passages imply. Have we actually thought about how much power there must be in our God? 

But now, let me share what Stoner wrote about the power of a sun:

    "The sun is a great power plant. If you were to mark off one square yard on the sun you would find it is giving off 70,000 horsepower of energy continuously. There are 10,000 times the square yards of the Earth on the sun. (For comparison's sake, the sun releases the equivalent of 2,700 Little Boy atomic bombs of 15 kt of TNT every second.)

This is a tremendous amount of energy, and "there is still enough energy for the sun to continue to burn for another 5 billion years." Is that power? Indeed, but consider now, there are 100 billion stars in our galaxy. Multiply our impression of God by 100 billion. But how many is 100 billion? "If you were to count 250 stars a minute, day and night, it would only take you 1,000 years to reach this number." Now that's power.

Lest we forget, the Milky Way is but one of many galaxies. How many? Perhaps a trillion (1,000,000,000,000) galaxies to consider. And there will be a host of planets in each of those solar systems represented by a star, each with mass and velocity, traveling through space at fantastic speeds. All this motion and mass contains kinetic energy which had to be created and set in motion somehow.

I think this properly, or at least minimally, begins to put into perspective the words of Jesus in Matthew 28:18 ".. all power is given unto me."