For
as
long as I can remember, I have wanted to go to Cape Canaveral,
Florida and
visit the “Kennedy Space Center”.
Last
week, I got my chance. For an entire day, Sara and I wandered
around marvelling
over rockets, spacesuits and moon rocks.
It was incredible!
The
amazing
thing about the space program is that it was built entirely on
hope. When John F. Kennedy
made his famous speech stating
that the United States was going to put a man on the moon before
the end of the
decade, America had put a grand total of one astronaut into space. In fact, that historic flight
by Alan
Shepherd was not even an orbital mission.
All he did was go up and come back down.
In other words, NASA had no plans, no hardware and no
capability to do
what the president said they were going to do.
All they had was the hope that they could do it, but that
hope made all
the difference.
In
the
beginning, the rockets failed more often than they flew, but they
looked at one
another and said, “We are going to the moon!”
As
their understanding and ability increased, they looked at one
another and said,
“We are going to the moon!”
Even
when a series of huge mistakes took the lives of three astronauts
on Apollo 1,
the hope of going to the moon moved the program forward and,
because of that
hope, they did not stop until they reached their goal.
Hope
is
powerful! Hope is fuel
that keeps us
going. Hope enables us to
dream, plan,
think and see possibilities even when our circumstances are less
than
desirable. Hope is
essential for growth,
progress and maturity. When
a feeling of
hopelessness creeps in, we are done.
Knowing
this, it should come as no surprise that the Bible says a great
deal about
hope. In one instance,
Paul says, “I
pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that
you may know
the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious
inheritance in
his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who
believe”
(Ephesians 1:18-19). If
hope sustains us
in earthly things, how much more important is a hope that benefits
us not only
now, but eternally as well?
Jesus’
death gives us hope and that hope changes everything.
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