Next Stop: New Dirt.

As our lives unfold on this Earth, there are events that transpire that leave indelible marks on us. Moments frozen in time, left to bounce around our existence and surface at various intervals. Moments so profound, monumental, or tragic that we likely have no problem answering the question "Where were you when..." For me, among those moments, there is one that stands out. One that exemplifies one attribute of Humanity. The Challenger disaster.

Since Adam and Eve were sent out of the garden of Eden, Mankind has had a compulsion to explore, a desire to see what is on the other side of that hill even if it is only more dirt. Because it is unexplored dirt and that, for some reason intrigues us, draws us to see, to learn, to experience something new. We see this drive throughout history in big and small ways. From our first bicycle that allowed us to reach beyond the distance we could walk into the world, to names like Marco Polo, Ernest Shackleton, and Henry Hudson who stretched Mankind's knowledge to the ends of the Earth. But this drive to expand and explore has even flavored many of our television shows. Star Trek. Firefly, Wagon Train. Battlestar Galactica. Stargate. Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. Little House on the Prairie. Seaquest DSV. Lost in Space. The Man From Atlantis, and others have had the exploration of various frontiers somewhere in their makeup. 

"In fourteen hundred and ninety two…" say it with me "… Columbus sailed the ocean, blue." Most of us learned that little poem in grade school but did you know that the largest of Columbus' four explorations consisted of like 17 ships and about 1500 crew? Even if you knew that, I bet you did not know that some 60 years earlier, the Chinese Admiral Zheng had 317 ships some of them 10 times the size of Columbus’ and 27,000 crew! These Chinese ships plied the seas of Southeast Asia, sailed to India, the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea and down the East Coast of Africa and possibly even touched the Americas decades before Columbus.

Considering this, shouldn't we all be wearing silk robes and eating with 2 sticks of bamboo? The reason we are not is because around 1430 A.D. China decided to build a wall and close themselves off from the rest of the world in xenophobic isolation. They gave up their thirst for discovery and instead became doomed to be themselves discovered. It becomes obvious that squelching the call of exploration means stagnation of a society.

There is a line from the movie Interstellar that I find very applicable. "Mankind was born on this planet, but we were never meant to die on it." I wonder if the script writer really knew how true that statement is, even if not in the way they meant it. This world is our cradle, our playpen, our yard fenced in by moments of Time. We spend our "celestial childhood" here, learning what we can about how we fit into God's plan so we'll be better prepared when it comes time to "shuffle off this mortal coil" and enter the true reality of Heaven.

On this day, 30 years ago, 7 people gave their lives in the pursuit of exploration. Seven more names to add to the list of courageous explorers. Seven more names to challenge a new generation of explorers. 
Don't forget them: Sharon Christa McAuliffe, Gregory Jarvis, Judith A. Resnik, Francis R. (Dick) Scobee, Ronald E. McNair, Mike J. Smith, Ellison S. Onizuka

Wings or Flippers? It's Your Choice.

I like quotes from the famous, unfamous, and sometimes infamous people throughout history. The process of taking an idea or concept and distilling it down to a minimum of words leaves a sentence or two that shares the message in a succinct and powerful burst of grammatically expressive thought. Many of the things I hold most dear have impacted me through the power of quotes.

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." Eleanor Roosevelt. 

"I will either find a way or make one.” Hannibal (after he was told it was impossible to get elephants across the alps to sack Rome.)

"if you don't care where you're going, you're not lost." homeless person wandering around my back yard.

One of my favorites quotes is from John Wesley: he said "Among the many difficulties of our early ministry, my brother George often said 'if the Lord would give me wings, I'd fly' I used to answer 'if God bids me fly, I will trust Him for the wings.'" What a great expression of faith. To be secure in the presence of God and so sure of His aid that the “how” doesn’t matter as long as we trust the “Who." 

We see this in Peter when he called out to Jesus to bid him jump out of the boat and come to him across the water. Peter was not walking on water, but on the word of Jesus; “Come." This brash and outspoken disciple threw himself out of the boat and landed smack-dab on Jesus’ word. It wasn’t until Simon Peter took his eyes off of Jesus and pointed them towards the waves that he began to "wish I'd brought my swim fins" as he slowly sank beneath the water and Jesus had to rescue him. There is a reason Jesus nicknamed him “Peter” which means “pebble" or "small stone" and not “Rock” which means large boulder.

John Wesley’s quote reminds me of a hiker that wandered off the path and slipped over a cliff's edge and found himself dangling from a bush root sticking out of the canyon wall. It was so dark that the hiker could not tell if he was one foot or a thousand above the canyon floor. He began yelling "Help! Is there anyone up there?" 

A moment later voice from above responded, "I am here, my son." 

"Oh, thank you! Who are you?"

"I am God."

"Wow!" said the hiker. "Really? That is terrific. So, what should I do?"

God said, "Trust me, my son, and let go."

After a few moments of awkward silence the hiker calls out, "Is there anyone else up there?"

Faith is sometimes difficult especially it we look at it through our “natural” point of view. Even though God is all powerful, we can limit what He can do in our lives by withholding our trust, our faith. Because we are bound to traverse our existence in this world moment by moment, it can be difficult to know how an action or reaction will affect our unforeseen future. But God's point of view is eternal, He stands outside of time and sees our lives in their entirety, from the cradle to the grave and all the fiddly bits in between. It is because we cannot see beyond the moment in which we live that we must have faith; must trust that God has a plan for us. 2 Corinthians 5:7 "For we live by faith, not by sight."  Romans 1:17, “For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith."

I Sometimes wonder if I'm still a child, dependent on the Milk and not yet ready for the Meat (Hebrews 5:12). Even though I may be getting better at living by faith, at times I still consider myself dependent on what I can see even though I wind up hanging from a bush root sticking out of a cliff calling out “Anyone else up there?” At times the verse above in 2 Corinthians stares me in the eye and challenges me to let go and trust him for the wings. It is a level of faith to which I aspire. Phillipians 3:14 - "I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus."

What could you accomplish if your attitude was "If God bids me fly, I'll trust him for the wings?" It's your choice: Wings or Flippers?