Monday of the fourth week in Lent

Date: Monday, March 11, 2024
Contributor:  Gayle Marsh
Lectionary Link https://www.lectionarypage.net/WeekdaysOfLent/MondayFourthWeek.html
 
If you are a history buff or were alive in August 1971, you might remember the Apollo 15 mission. It’s the mission that brought the lunar rover to the moon. Mission Commander Colonel David Scott, was the seventh person to walk on the moon and first person to drive the rover.

This picture is from Episcopal Digital Network Archives. 

Scott was a member of St Christopher’s Episcopal Church in League City, Texas. Along with their prayers he was sent off with a Bible from the parish to carry in in his personal travel bag. Besides his footprints Scott left, he also left the Bible (circled) on the lunar module. How cool is that?

St Christopher is the patron of travelers. Jesus seems fond of asking followers to travel light, to be in relationship with the people and places we are sent. What do you carry with you, literally or figuratively? What rests on your nightstand? Maybe it’s a Bible that proclaims the “Word of the Lord endures forever”, (I Peter 1:25) maybe it’s a Book of Common Prayer, a daily source to cling to and shape you over time. Or maybe it’s a hymn from Sunday that keeps humming alongside as you travel. Songs grafted into our hearts become poetic sources that build resilience.

David Scott left both his footprints and his Bible behind as a testimony to those who decades later return to the moon. Since the season of Lent reminds us of the shortness of life. What witness, what legacies will we leave behind for others to find?

Much has happened in the past five decades of space travel and I am constantly amazed how the Hubble and James Web telescope “proclaim the glory of God’s handiwork”. This image of Hubble Butterfly Nebula NGC 6302 illuminates a portion of today’s reading from Isaiah 65:17–25.

​“I am about to create new heavens
and a new earth;
the former things shall not be remembered
or come to mind.
But be glad and rejoice forever
in what I am creating….

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