10 May The Perfect Flight Plan

As a child of the 1960s, I was infatuated with the moonshot program. I got out of farm chores on July 20, 1969, so I could watch Neil Armstrong and Ed Aldrin walk on the moon. So, imagine my excitement when humans again traveled to the moon in April. I missed watching Liftoff live, but I made sure I was in front of my TV to watch Splashdown on April 10. Something specific about the coverage fascinated me.

The news anchor I was watching kept pointing out that NASA projected the capsule to land at 8:07 Eastern time in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego. And that’s exactly what happened. The anchor went on and on about how amazing it was that NASA got the timing exactly right. Actually, God got the timing right.

You see, everything about space travel is dependent on God keeping the universe running precisely as we have come to know it. NASA calculates everything on the belief that the nature of the universe will not change; the earth will continue rotating on its axis at the speed it always has, travel around the sun at the same speed it always has, and the moon will be in three or four days where it always is. NASA trusts that it will never change. Because it doesn’t, they can precisely predict splashdown time. Imagine if we lived our lives that way, trusting perfectly in the perfection of God.

• Flight Plan: Submit our whole lives to Him
• Course Correction: Submit/surrender our plans to Him
• Splash Down-Mission Accomplished: Surrender/Submit seasons to Him

Flight Plan:

5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. 6 For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin— 7 because anyone who has died has been set free from sin. Romans 6:5-7 (NIV)

When we truly die to Christ, we can fully receive his perfect plan for our lives

Course Correction:

5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; 6 in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight. Proverbs 3:5-6 (NIV)

When a spacecraft drifts off course, Mission Control trusts God to run the universe perfectly and they recalculate a course based on that perfection. Even if we stray off His Path, we can trust his perfection and get back to where He wants us.

Splash Down-Mission Accomplished:

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens. Ecclesiastes 3:1 (NIV)

God has an appointed time for every season in our lives. When we trust that the way NASA trusts God’s perfection (whether they realize it or not) we will arrive where He wants us at exactly “8:07 PM EDT.”

A reliably unchanging universe is manifest evidence of a reliably unchanging God. We can trust Him with everything!

Pastor Jerry Bader