For a lot of us, this would be regarded as “a long time ago”, and though I suspect most of us have no recollection of this date, you will remember these 4 digits by the end of this post.
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1968 was one for the memories.
The Bad.
- After three years of being deployed and fighting the Vietnam War, Anti Vietnam War protests were made throughout the western world.
- Martin Luther King Jr spends a day in April at Lorraine Motel in Memphis working and meeting with local leaders on plans for his Poor People’s March on Washington. He was shot later that day and declared dead just an hour later.
- This led to the Civil Rights being signed, which made it an uneasy time in America. With much rioting and protest.
- In France, “Bloody Monday” marks one of the most violent days of Parisian student revolt.
- Senator Robert Kennedy, former Attorney General and brother of the former president John F Kenned runs for presidency in March. He was shot and mortally wounded in June.
There was some good coming out of 1968 of course.
- The Boeing 747 made its maiden flight.
- Air Bags in cars were invented.
- Dr Christian Barnard performs the first successful heart transplant (hooray for doctors!)
- The first Automated Teller Machine was install in the U.S (did you know that was what ATM meant?)
- The Emergency 911 telephone service was started in the U.S to provide a single number for reporting emergencies 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
However, something else would save 1968 from being a year that everyone wanted to forget. The saving grace? Three men in a small capsule, sitting on top of a crazy huge rocket marked with the letters NASA. They went on to make the first manned space orbit round the moon. (hint: this was not the moon landing, that would happen a year later)
Their mission was to orbit the moon in a progressive step towards putting a man on the moon. However when they went round the moon, it was another planet that got their attention. This was what they saw.
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| The Good Earth |
And with the whole world watching live, Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and William A Anders took turns reading from the book of Genesis, verse 1 to 10, and ended with this;
“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.”
All of you on the good Earth.
Those words combined with that picture put everyone’s reality back in check. We weren’t the centre of the Universe, and in actual fact, we were really really small, just a little blue orb in space. Sure it was a bad year, one with much hatred, pain and tears, but no matter how big our problems were, especially with each other, we all shared a common thing, we are all inhabitants on the good Earth.
In the same way the people in 1968 got their reality check, we too have to get our own. Sometimes we focus so much on our problems until it becomes our world and consumes us, but we forget there is so much more out there, so many things that are bigger than ourselves and especially our problems.
Friends, I’m not saying you should disregard your problems or denounce your grief. If there is something to be settled, settle it. If there is a time to mourn, cry and mourn. But let’s keep these things in perspective and never let them become our world. Why?
Because we weren’t meant to live this way.
“No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death or life, neither angels or demons, neither the present or the future, or any powers, neither height or depth, or anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
– Rom 8:37-39
– Rom 8:37-39
Remember 1968. With the love of Christ, nothing is impossible.
From the land of predator surveyors,
The Stranded Homesick
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