50 years ago this month...something amazing

This Christmas marks the 50th anniversary of something remarkable:  Apollo 8 circled the moon.  Six months later Americans would eclipse this achievement by landing on it.

But 50 years ago, on Christmas Eve, as Apollo 8 came out from behind the moon and the camera picked up the beautiful blue Earth (though only seen by viewers in black and white), the entire crew of Apollo 8--astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and William Anders--immortalized the moment by taking turns reciting the opening verses of the biblical book of Genesis.

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.  And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.  And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

   And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.  And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

At a time when America was being torn apart by leftist politics (just months earlier we'd seen the riots at the Democrat convention in Chicago), the video of the Earth from a quarter million miles away, with the words of Genesis as narrative, was breathtaking.

Today, 50 years later, can you imagine any government employee daring to do such a thing?  It would be a career-ending move.

That's how much the U.S. has changed.  Do you think the change has been for the better?

Merry Christmas.