First Thoughts -- First Words - Eric Metaxas - From The Moon

From Eric Metaxas...


It's interesting to think that some of the first words ever spoken on the surface of the moon were those of Jesus.


"I am the vine, you are the branches. [Whoever] abides in Me...will bring forth much fruit...(John 15:5)



Astronaut Buzz Aldrin said that he'd intended to read this communion passage in his transmission back to earth, but at the same time, NASA was embroiled in a legal battle with Madalyn O'Hair, the outspoken atheist who was suing NASA becase the Apollo 8 crew had read a few scriptures from Genesis when they orbited the moon on Christmas of 1968.



Aldrin had been asked not to read the scriptures over the radio, and he reluctantly complied, reading them quietly as he gave thanks to God.



"It was interesting for me think," he said some years later, "the very first liquid ever poured on the moon, and the very first food eaten there, were the communion elements."




And interesting for us to think that the first symbolic act on the moon was a remembrance of a self-sacrificial act of grace made 2000 years earlier by the One who made the moon and the Earth and the stars.