communion on the moon

Communion on the Moon: July 20, 1969
(This is an article by Eric Metaxas)                          phineasandferbinthebackyard.webs.com
Forty-two years ago two human beings changed history by walking on the surface
of the moon. But what happened before Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong exited the
Lunar Module is perhaps even more amazing, if only because so few people know about it.
"I'm talking about the fact that Buzz Aldrin took communion on the surface of the moon.
Some months after his return, he wrote about it in Guideposts magazine.
And a few years ago I had the privilege of meeting him myself. I asked him about it and he
confirmed the story to me, and I wrote about in my book
"Everything You Always Wanted to Know About God (But Were Afraid to Ask)."

The background to the story is t hat Aldrin was an elder at his Presbyterian Church in Texas
during this period in his life, and knowing that he would soon be doing something unprecedented
in human history, he felt he should mark the occasion somehow, and he asked his minister to
help him. And so the minister consecrated a communion wafer and a small vial of communion wine.
And Buzz Aldrin took them with him out of the Earth's orbit and on to the surface of the moon.

He and Armstrong had only been on the lunar surface for a few minutes when Aldrin made the
following public statement: "This is the LM pilot. I'd like to take this opportunity to ask every
person listening in, whoever and wherever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate
the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his or her own way." He then ended radio
communication and there, on the silent surface of the moon, 250,000 miles from home, he read
a verse from the Gospel of John, and he took communion. Here is his own account of what happened:

"In the radio blackout, I opened the little plastic packages which contained the bread and the wine.
I poured the wine into the chalice our church had given me. In the one-sixth gravity of the moon,
the wine slowly curled and gracefully came up the side of the cup. Then I read the scripture, 'I am
the vine, you are the branches. Whosoever abides in me will bring forth much fruit.. Apart from me
you can do nothing.’

“I had intended to read my communion passage back to earth, but at the last minute [they] had
requested that I not do this. NASA was already embroiled in a legal battle with Madelyn Murray O'Hare,
the celebrated opponent of religion, over the Apollo 8 crew reading from Genesis while orbiting the moon at
Christmas. I agreed reluctantly. “I ate the tiny Host and swallowed the wine. I gave thanks for the
intelligence and spirit that had brought two young pilots to the Sea of Tranquility. It was interesting
for me to think: the very first liquid ever poured on the moon, and the very first food eaten there, were the communion elements.”

And of course, it's interesting to think that some of the first words spoken on the moon were the words of
Jesus Christ, who made the Earth and the moon – and Who, in the immortal words of Dante, is Himself the "Love that moves the Sun and other stars."

How many of you knew this? Too bad this type news doesn't travel as fast as the bad does...share it if you've
felt God's Love