QUARANTINE BLOG # 394

April 28, 2021

I ask an interest in your prayers this morning while I am having a small skin cancer removed from my face.  Very many thanks!

👉  Less than two weeks ago, NASA awarded a contract to SpaceX for $2.9 billion to use their launch vehicle, “Starship,” to take astronauts from lunar orbit to the surface of the moon.  

SpaceX’s Starship prototype launching from Boca Chica, Texas.

Last year NASA awarded contracts to three companies for initial design work on landers that could carry humans to the lunar surface.  In addition to Elon Musk’s SpaceX, NASA selected proposals from Dynetics, a defense contractor in Huntsville, Alabama, and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, which had joined in what it called the National Team with several traditional aerospace companies: Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper.

On Monday, Blue Origin filed a protest with the Government Accountability Office over NASA’s decision to select only SpaceX for its Human Landing System (HLS) program, arguing the agency “moved the goalposts” of the competition.  The company, in a lengthy filing with the GAO, claimed that the companies were not given the opportunity to change their proposals to reflect the agency’s reduced budget for HLS.  Blue Origin’s bid was $5.99 billion, while SpaceX won with $2.89 billion.  

Artist’s rendition of Blue Origin’s HLS.

Reading about Blue Origin’s protest I remember a quote from the early days of human space flight which has been attributed both to Alan Shepard and John Glenn.

When reporters asked Shepard what he thought about as he sat atop the Redstone rocket, waiting for liftoff, he replied, “The fact that every part of this ship was built by the lowest bidder.”

John Glenn said, “I guess the question I’m asked the most often is: ‘When you were sitting in that capsule listening to the count-down, how did you feel?’  Well, the answer to that one is easy.  I felt exactly how you would feel if you were getting ready to launch and knew you were sitting on top of two million parts – all built by the lowest bidder on a government contract.”

Reading about these two space billionaires squabbling over who gets the contract, I remember another quote from Alan Shepard.  After several delays and more than four hours in the capsule, Shepard was ready to go into space on May 5, 1961.  He urged mission controllers to “fix your little problem and light this candle.”  Amen!

Alan B. Shepard, Jr., onboard Freedom 7.

👉  By the time you read this, the FDA may have banned the production and sale of menthol cigarettes, which is a good thing that ought to continue in the banning of all cigarettes (and let’s throw in cigars, pipes, chewing tobacco, and snuff).  The evidence is overwhelming that the use of tobacco products causes cancer.  If the powers that be would ban it because of the smell alone, that would be a good thing, but the lives saved would be an unquestionable benefit to human beings.

The time line of this effort started in 2013 and has had many stops and starts, but now it seems to be gaining momentum, at least according to Delmonte Jefferson, executive director of the Center for Black Health & Equity, because “the racial awakening we had last summer exposed the inequities in our system . . . [and] menthol is just another example of the health inequities that have plagued African Americans for generations.”  NBC News reports that the vast majority of Black smokers – 85 percent – use menthol cigarettes. 

👉  Here are some sayings of questionable wisdom:

Everyone has the right to be stupid but you’re abusing the privilege.

Experience is a wonderful thing. It enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.

He has delusions of adequacy.

He has no enemies but is intensely disliked by his friends.

How many observe Christ’s birthday, how few his precepts (Benjamin Franklin).

👉  I should have included the following phrase origin in yesterday’s blog, right after the piece about the Kentucky Derby.

👉  A couple of signs of the times to ponder:

👉  Hal David wrote the words and Albert Hammon wrote the music for “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before.”  Hammon recorded it in 1975 on his album “99 Miles From L.A.,” but the most famous cover was a 1984 recording by Julio Iglesias and Willie Nelson.  It was Iglesias’ biggest hit in the United States and Canada, and Nelson’s biggest European hit.  Nelson and Iglesias were also named “Duo of the Year” by the Country Music Association, and “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before” was named single of the year by the Academy of Country Music.  And with that, we’ll wrap up our salute to songs with girls’ names.

👉  Today’s close is by Paul David Tripp.

Think about the words penned by Peter near the beginning of his first New Testament letter: “Now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith – more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire – may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 1:6-7 ESV).

As he opens his letter, Peter gives us a past-present-future summary of God’s redemptive plan, but his interest is really in what God is doing right here, right now between Christ’s first and second comings.  Of all of the words that he could use to describe what God is doing now, he selects these three: grieved, trials, and tested.  These are three words that most of us hope would never describe our lives.  None of us gets up in the morning and prays, “Lord, if you love me, you will send more suffering my way today.”  Rather, when we are living in the middle of difficulty, we are tempted to view it as a sign of God’s unfaithfulness or inattention.

Peter, however, doesn’t see moments of difficulty as objects in the way of God’s plan or indications of the failure of God’s plan.  No, for him they are an important part of God’s plan.  Rather than being signs of his inattention, they are sure signs of the zeal of his redemptive love.  In grace, he leads you where you didn’t plan to go in order to produce in you what you couldn’t achieve on your own.  In these moments, he works to alter the values of your heart so that you let go of your little kingdom of one and give yourself to his kingdom of glory and grace.

God is working right now, but not so much to give us predictable, comfortable, and pleasurable lives.  He isn’t so much working to transform our circumstances as he is working through hard circumstances to transform you and me.  Perhaps in hard moments, when we are tempted to wonder where God’s grace is, it is grace that we are getting, but not grace in the form of a soft pillow or a cool drink.  Rather, in those moments, we are being blessed with the heart-transforming grace of difficulty because the God who loves us knows that this is exactly the grace we need.

-30-