Reaching for the Moon

"If you're wrong, do we get a cookie?" asked my helicopter team, weary of testing yet another rubber motor for yet another helicopter.
If only all I lost every time I was wrong was a cookie, I think I'd be more willing to be wrong. But if cookies were to be the motivation for my helicopter team to finish strong in the race to Science Olympiad gold, so be it. I thought about giving some sort of motivational speech, but decided cookies were easier to hand out than words at that point. The State Science Olympiad contest this weekend could not come a moment too soon. If it arrives after the sugar high wears off, we are doomed. We all want to win, but it has been a long season with many long hours and even perfectionists lose steam.

I reach for the moon alot. One who reaches for the moon is bound to come away at times empty handed. This is not in the Bible, but it should be.

I was very sad to read that NASA has informed its already depleted astronaut staff that the chance of them going on any more outer space flights to the moon is "slim to nil."  A paltry few will be allowed to tag along on the Russian shuttles to the International Space station, but the future of any shuttle program here is dim. What will happen to all the young boys and girls who want to grow up to be astronauts? What happens to their dreams?

We are reading about the incredible era in US history when President Kennedy who was elected because he was by  far the most handsome man in the race, challenged us to have a man on the moon before the Communists. This is because the entire Western world was fearful of the Outer Space Domino effect, which meant that if the moon became communistic, one by one other heavenly bodies would topple to that form of government, and eventually, the sun itself would have to be addressed as "Citizen Sun Comrade." Subsequently, the daylight hours would have to be evenly distributed equally to every single inch of  land on Earth. This of course would require that the earth be unrolled since it would be physically impossible for a sphere to have an equal allotment of Citizen Sun. This would have cataclysmic repercussions, not the least of which Columbus would be wrong, the world would indeed be flat, and all our geography books would need to be revised. Thus, President Kennedy, being an excellent motivator, besides being handsome, urged us to "Hie thee to the moon!" pronto.

Our nation's eager and intellectually gifted children complied, took their science class a little more seriously, and in the end prevented the entire universe from being engulfed behind the Iron Curtain, planting a US flag on lunar soil first. At that time, we collectively reached for the moon and grasped it. Sometimes I wonder if our nation is worn out, tired of being a beacon of hard working, sensible, reasonable, altruistic, and noble aspirations. I think we may all be crumbling into a bunch of whiners who just want a cookie.

This is not to imply that my helicopter team is whiney. They are weary, but they worked their patooties off for 3 hours on Easter Sunday reaching for the moon....and for cookies.

Deuteronomy 33: 13-15
  “May the LORD bless his land
   with the precious dew from heaven above
   and with the deep waters that lie below;
¹⁴ with the best the sun brings forth
   and the finest the moon can yield;
¹⁵ with the choicest gifts of the ancient mountains
   and the fruitfulness of the everlasting hills;