by Ronald R Johnson (www.ronaldrjohnson.com)
Lloyd Douglas wrote out the prayers he uttered in worship, because he did not want to make them up on the spur of the moment. They were meant to be thought-provoking, as well as to lead the congregation in prayer. Here is one of them, reprinted in The Living Faith, p. 299:
We beseech Thee to make known to us more and more clearly each day the duties we are expected to perform if we are to fulfill our destiny. We plead for that serenity of spirit which trusts confidently that Thy will may and must and can be done on earth as it is done in heaven.
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Perfect timing Ron. I just now finished streaming the new NOVA special about Apollo 8, the first lunar orbit with humans on board. There were thousands of duties that had to be done by hundreds of people of all disciplines each day to pull off that mission. Of course there was tremendous anxiety, but as you watch live footage from the spacecraft command module and the control room, there was also a sense of serenity and trust. You are probably too young to remember except from history books, but as they orbited the moon on Christmas Eve, the astronauts did a live TV broadcast back to earth reading the creation story from Genesis 1. I remember, as I also remember watching live on TV when Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon just a few months later. It was an emotional time, and as I write this I am crying over 50 years later. Gosh, we were gutsy in those days. I wonder if our children and grandchildren will remember in the same way when we orbit and then set foot on Mars!
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Hi, Jim. Yes, I do remember all of those things. I was eleven the summer of 1969 and, like everyone else around me, was quite excited and eager to see it on TV. Over the years, I have grown in my appreciation of what they accomplished. It’s interesting that you connected that with Lloyd Douglas’s prayer. In his day, the big accomplishment was the completion of the Panama Canal, and he was just as enthusiastic about that as all of us were about the lunar landing. He died in 1951, long before the space program got underway, but it would have excited his imagination. He especially would have been interested in all the logistical problems that came up and how the engineers solved them.
Thanks for sharing that!
Ron
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