February 10, 2003
DOWN HOME:
Eternity turns on 16 minutes
___How do you feel when you're 16 minutes from home?
___If you're flying and seated by a window, you're close enough to look for landmarks. If you're driving, you're already in that zone where your car practically finds its own way.
___When you've been gone two weeks and you're 16 minutes from home, you can almost feel your spouse's next kiss, your kids' hugs, your dog's warm tongue on the back of your hand. At 16 minutes from home, you breathe a sigh of relief because, compared to the long journey, you're already there.
___We'll never know what those brave astronauts inside Columbia were thinking when they were just 16 minutes from landing. I hope the pilots were preoccupied with their duties and the others were thinking happily about a reunion with their
loved ones. I hope they never sensed their spacecraft was falling apart. I hope they never sniffed danger.
___Columbia's sad story has gripped our nation. I've found myself thinking about Rick Husband, the mission commander. Although his accomplishments far eclipsed my own, I've indulged feelings of kinship.
___We're almost the same age, and we grew up not far apart, he in Amarillo and I in Perryton. We may have played on the same ball fields, run on the same track. Surely, we felt the same northers and watched the same sunsets. More importantly, we have known Jesus as our Lord and Savior. We've been active in our churches. We've had happy marriages, and we've been trying to raise two children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. I wish I'd known him.
___Less than three days before Columbia disintegrated, a friend's 7-year-old daughter died, almost without warning. She got sick on Monday and died on Wednesday. Doctors think a virus attacked her heart.
___NASA investigators may never know what caused Columbia to fail. Doctors may never know how a child became vulnerable to such a rare and lethal illness. We want answers, but we live with confusion.
___Everyone knows flying in space is dangerous, yet we took the astronauts' safety for granted. Nobody expected a second-grader's Monday-morning trip to school to be her last.
___All around us, we witness life's fragility. Still, if you're like me, you project yourself into the future and assume you'll be there to live that life you dream.
___Of course, nothing like that is promised. We do not know how our days are numbered, but we are stewards of each of them. We must not take them for granted; we must invest them wisely.
___The greatest investment is to live so that our lives glorify God and lead others to know God through a relationship with Jesus Christ.
___Because we never know when someone is 16 minutes from home.
The Baptist Standard
News of religion, faith, missions, Bible study and Christian ministry among Texas Baptist churches, in the BGCT, the Southern Baptist Convention ( SBC ) and around the world.
Contents/ Masthead / Why We're Here / Links / Archive / E-mail us/ SUBSCRIBE!/ Signup for FirstLook
|