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My wife and I recently read Rocket Men: the daring odyssey of Apollo 8 and the astronauts who made man’s first journey to the moon, by Robert Kurson.  (Thanks, Mark Moffat, for the tip!)

Page 282 describes the astronauts, on their way home, crossing the point “at which Earth’s gravity [becomes] dominant.” From there the spaceship gradually accelerated until, days later, entering the earth’s atmosphere, they topped out at 24,500 mph.

“But that was a long way off,” Kurson writes, “and for now, when the crew looked out their windows, with no landmarks in sight, they seemed to be standing still.” That was an illusion. They were not motionless, they were flying at 5,720 mph.

“A good metaphor for life,” my wife said when she came to that page. Sometimes it feels like you’re stuck when you’re actually flying. Maybe you’ve had seasons like that.

Baby bird from America

In 1993, I spent two weeks in Ukraine teaching Cross-Cultural Communication of the Gospel at Donetsk Christian University, invited by Dr. Ray Prigodich, DCU academic dean at the time. It was my first overseas trip—after fifteen years as a missionary long overdue—and full of wonder and worry: the wonder of a foreign culture, the worry of a new assignment. My classroom skills were limited, my experience even less.