QUARANTINE BLOG # 378

April 12, 2021

Sixty years ago today Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin (Юрий Алексеевич Гагарин) became the first human to journey into outer space.  The flight took 108 minutes from launch to landing .  In his capsule Vostok 1, he completed one orbit of Earth, becoming an instant international celebrity.  He was awarded his nation’s highest honor, Hero of the Soviet Union.  

At 9:07 a.m. Moscow time, Chief Designer Sergei Korolev announced, “Preliminary stage.  Intermediate.  Main.  Lift off!  We wish you a good flight.  Everything is all right.”  Gagarin replied, “Let’s roll!”

The entire mission was controlled by either automatic systems or by ground control, because medical staff and spacecraft engineers were unsure how a human might react to weightlessness, and therefore it was decided to lock the pilot’s manual controls.  The spacecraft’s automatic systems initiated retrorocket firing, and 30 minutes later when Vostok 1 was 4.3 miles from the ground, the hatch of the spacecraft was released, and two seconds later Gagarin was ejected, his parachute opened, and about ten minutes later, he landed.

A farmer and her daughter observed the strange scene of a figure in a bright orange suit with a large white helmet landing near them by parachute.  Gagarin later recalled, “When they saw me in my space suit and the parachute dragging alongside as I walked, they started to back away in fear.  I told them, don’t be afraid,  I am a Soviet citizen like you, who has descended from space and I must find a telephone to call Moscow!”

Vostok 1 was Gagarin’s only spaceflight because Soviet officials afraid he might be killed in a later flight, but on March 27, 1968, while piloting a MiG-15 training jet, he was killed when a malfunction caused his aircraft to crash.

👉  A three-man crew docked at the International Space Station this past Friday after a flight honoring the 60th anniversary of Gagarin’s historic mission.  The Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft that the trio took off in was been named after the legendary cosmonaut.

👉  The Space Shuttle Columbia began a new era of human spaceflight when STS-1 lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on April 12, 1981, for the inaugural flight of the nation’s Space Shuttle Program.  Aboard the spacecraft were commander John W. Young and pilot Robert L. Crippen. 

Columbia lifted off at 7 a.m. from Launch Pad 39A and was NASA’s first crewed mission since the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project in 6 years earlier.  The launch occurred 20 years to the day after the first human launch of cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin.  Colombia concluded STS-1 on April 14, 1981, with a touchdown at Edwards Air Force Base, California, after a 54-hour mission.

Between the first launch in 1981 and the final landing on July 21, 2011, NASA’s space shuttle fleet – Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour – flew 135 missions.

👉  Aren’t you glad you don’t work for A OK Walker Autoworks in Peachtree City.  Andreas Flaten left his job there in November, and said the company owed him back pay of $915.  Walker Autoworks dumped at 90,000 pennies on his driveway last month as a form of final payment for his work.  The owner of the shop, Miles Walker, told WGCL-TV that he didn’t know if he did or didn’t drop the pennies off at Flaten’s house.  “I don’t really remember,” Walker said.  “It doesn’t matter.  He got paid, that’s all that matters.”  

Flaten had been spending an hour or two every night trying to clean the pennies, which he stored in a wheelbarrow in his garage.  When Bellevue, Washington-based Coinstar heard about his predicament, they decided that change was needed.  They picked up Flaten’s coins last week and rounded up the amount to give him a $1,000 check.  They also made donations to two charities of Flaten’s choosing.

👉  My grandkids and I like to play Monopoly.  We have 7 different versions from “Minions Monopoly,” to “Star Wars Monopoly” to a version that uses only electronic money – no cash.  We do not, however, play the Baby Blues version:

👉  Here are a couple of signs for the times:

👉  Before we close, let’s play another song with a girl’s name, “Eleanor Rigby,” by the Beatles.

Paul McCartney got the name “Eleanor” from actress Eleanor Bron, who appeared in the 1965 Beatles film Help!  “Rigby” came to him when he was in Bristol, England and spotted a store: Rigby and Evens Ltd Wine and Spirit Shippers.

McCartney wasn’t sure what the song was going to be about until he came up with the line, “Picks up the rice in a church where a wedding has been.”  That’s when he came up with the story of an old, lonely woman.  The song actually tells the story of two lonely people Eleanor Rigby, and Father McKenzie, whose sermons “no one will hear.”  “Father Mackenzie” was originally “Father McCartney.”  Paul decided he didn’t want to freak out his dad and picked a name out of the phone book instead.

👉  Incompatible.

In 1996 Congress passed the Telecommunications Act which required TV broadcasters to switch from an analog signal to a digital one by June 12, 2009.  Imagine for a moment, you hadn’t heard the news of the change over, and when you woke up on June 12, your TV, which had worked perfectly well last night, now showed a picture of snow, or maybe just a black screen.  The old equipment no longer worked with the new system.

That’s what Jesus was talking about when he said, “Who would patch old clothing with new cloth?  For the new patch would shrink and rip away from the old cloth, leaving an even bigger tear than before.  And no one puts new wine into old wineskins.  For the wine would burst the wineskins, and the wine and the skins would both be lost.  New wine calls for new wineskins” (Mark 2:21-22 NLT).

When I’m clothes shopping, I check the labels for “pre-shrunk,” which hopefully means, the first time I wash it, my shirt won’t come out 2 sizes too small.  But in Jesus’ time, clothes shrank every time they were washed.  If you tried to patch a hole in an old garment with a new piece if cloth, when it was washed, it would tear the garment.  The old is incompatible with the new.  

If you were making wine in those days, you would put it in a new wine skin, because as the juice fermented, it would stretch the skin.  When the all wine had been consumed the old skin was thrown away, because new wine poured into it would make the skin burst and the wine would be lost.  The old is incompatible with the new.  

One day on a dusty road going towards Jerusalem Jesus made a hard demand of his followers, and many, sensing the incompatibility of the old with the new, deserted him.  He turned to the 12 and asked, “Are you also going to leave?”  Simon Peter replied, “Lord, to whom would we go?  You have the words that give eternal life” (John 6:67-68).  Having tasted the new, Peter knew the old would never satisfy again.

When Jesus comes, everything changes.  The old ways don’t work anymore.  The old life without Jesus is incompatible with the new life in Jesus.  When he came into our lives we changed gods, nothing less radical.  Formerly we served Satan, now we serve the living Lord Jesus.  It is not easy.  It is a lifelong process of confessing and turning away from sin, yielding to the influence of the Holy Spirit, and growing in grace.

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