麻豆约拍

On this day in 1969 the American spacecraft Apollo 10 succeeded in bringing back the best images ever seen of the Moon and Earth from space. 聽At six times the speed of sound, Colonel Thomas Stafford and Commander Eugene Cernan carried out a rehearsal for the Moon landing that would take place later that summer. 聽The two spacemen came closer to the Moon's surface than any human being had ever come before. 聽Stafford said they took so many photographs that he feared the camera would jam.Seeing earthrise - the phenomenon of the Earth appearing over the edge of the moon鈥檚 horizon, was the most magnificent thing they鈥檇 ever seen. 聽It put their own, familiar planet into a completely new perspective and with this, changed their whole sense of where they belonged. 聽We鈥檙e so accustomed now to seeing pictures of the earth and moon and other planets in the galaxy that that overwhelming sense of awe no longer strikes us in the same way. 聽But seeing something from a new perspective can change our world view completely. 聽The poet Robert Burns prayed for the gift of seeing ourselves as others see us. 聽That would be one of the greatest changes of viewpoint that could ever come about. 聽It would be like seeing ourselves without the reversal that comes with looking at a mirror image. 聽But what about seeing ourselves as God sees us? 聽Perhaps things that loom large in our minds would be entirely overlooked, while things we gloss over would come into sharper focus. 聽Most of all we would see ourselves, and therefore others, with eyes of compassionate understanding. 聽That would be enough to make the earth move.God our loving Father, give us merciful eyes to see our world as you do, with love and understanding. 聽Amen.