Who is James Lovell? Wow, it is really ironic that you should ask.
He is the man who coined the phrase,
"Houston, we have a problem,"
and yesterday he spoke at the BYU Forum.
I find this amazingly awesome. This man has been to the moon, and I was in the same room as him. If I had ran down a few steps and across the stage I could have touched him, which means I practically would've been touching the moon, which is kinda like walking on it, which is on my bucket list. I almost came one step closer to being content with the thought of my death.
Yes, today was a big day for me.
So after attending this forum I know all of these random totally personal facts about this man that not everyone knows. Like the fact that he goes by Jim. And, well, that is the only random fact that I know, and seeing as his name is James, I worry that the average person may be able to guess that. However, I also learned that he has an amazing sense of humor, which is cool, because funny people are the people who end up on my "hey maybe I'll call you sometime when I'm bored and we can do something together" list. So I guess that means I can add James, or Jim as I like to call him, to my list.
But anyway, his talk was amazing. He started out by talking about Apollo 8, his first (successful) lunar landing. He said that the most amazing thing was looking down at the earth, a perfect sphere of blue and green. You could see no cities, no specific countries. There were no black people or white people, there were no wars or contentions. And when he held up his thumb, the entire planted was hidden.
Think about that.
His family, his job, his career, his school, his political views, his worries, his stresses, his joys, his pains were all covered by this thumb. Never before have I realized how truly small and insignificant we are, tucked away on our little planet Earth. I never realized how trivial so many things are, how there is so much beyond our atmosphere. It really made me think of how narrow my vision is, how I can only see the extremely short-term things and how my Father in Heaven must just laugh as he watches me thinking I know best. And when he doesn't want to watch me make stupid decisions, he can cover up my entire world with his thumb.
This thought blows my mind in so many different ways.
This thought blows my mind in so many different ways.
<3
What a cool perspective. I needed to read that this week, so thanks for sharing. I love how you write, btw.
ReplyDeleteIt reminds me of Moses, who, after the Lord had shown him the world upon which he was created, and the ends thereof, and all the children of men which are, and which were created; and of this Moses greatly marveled and wondered. And when he was left unto himself he fell unto the earth and said to himself: "Now for this cause I know that man is nothing, which thing I never had supposed." [Moses 1:8-10] Dad
ReplyDeleteI loved that devotional! It was seriously very cool! And so much to think about.
ReplyDeleteOkay, and I just laughed and laughed reading this post... lack of sleep probably helped, but I'm in the library, and so it was really hard to keep from laughing out loud, and I still got weird looks... :)