I happened on the keenest, coolest, swellest, niftiest,
grooviest website of all time today; (even though it is sponsored by the U.S.
government).
NASA is sending up a Mars lander named “InSight” in
2016, and the space agency is booking free reservations for a trip to the red
planet; first come, first served.
Well, almost.
In spite of the foregoing implication, when the rocket
carrying InSight lifts off next year it will lack any trace of human life. But
attached to the side of the Mars lander will be a microchip containing the
names of well over a hundred thousand earthlings who submitted their names;
names which will eventually grace the surface of an alien world, tens of
millions of miles from our own “blue marble.”
Is it any wonder when I chanced upon this website that
I immediately submitted my name, my wife’s name, and the names of our eight
minor grandchildren? And cool beyond cool, each time I submitted a new name I
was afforded the opportunity to print out an official seven color boarding pass;
which included a reservation number and the name of the family member. Having
done so, I summarily scanned each document, and forwarded them to my grandchildren.
(What a great souvenir)!
According to the website, in a few weeks I can bring
it up again, and I will be able to see an actual image of my engraved name as
it appears on the microchip. (Unless I am dead or disabled, you gotta know I’ll
be checking it out)!
Later, as I reflected on this particular scenario I
thought about the opportunity mankind has been given to journey into and
explore God’s great universe. Back in the “60’s,” well before I graduated from
high school, I was totally taken up with what we referred to as “The Space
Race.” A friend and I drove over to Cape Canaveral and watched the launch of an
unmanned Saturn 1B. In July 1969, A month before I pronounced the “I do’s” at
my first wedding ceremony, I watched the live broadcast of Neil Armstrong
stepping out on the surface of the moon. Along with the rest of the nation, I
mourned the loss of the ill-fated shuttles; Challenger and Colombia.
A boarding pass for a journey to Mars.
Considering the wars, and rumors of war, the hunger,
plagues, despair, pollution, global warming, abortion and divorce, and a myriad
of other woes on this planet, I have often thought that I might like to live on
a different planet, than the one upon which I was born. To journey to Mars or
some other possibly inhabitable planet, and to get a new start in a world
devoid of the maladies to which we have become, (sadly), all too familiar.
However, for a man approaching 70, (and as interested
as I have always been in mankind’s journey to the stars) I’m doubtful that I
will ever be afforded the good fortune to procure a real boarding pass to
another planet.
If, however, I had the opportunity to leave my
footprints on Mars, whatever lifeform frequented that place would, no doubt,
consider me an alien. But according to scripture, I am an alien on my own
planet since I am just passing through, and I was never meant to remain here.
As the song assures us, “The world is not my home,” and as scripture attests,
“We know that if the earthly tent we live in is
destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built
by human hands.” (2nd Corinthians 5:1)
That which we call “real,” that which we can touch,
and which is, for the moment, tangible, is passing away, and that which is, for
the moment, invisible will one day take on tangibility, and will ultimately be
the only “real” we will be privileged to know and enjoy; forevermore.
This old world is not my home. I’m just a stranger
passing through.
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