Some years ago now, I was standing in front of my class reading to them an article. It was a few days after the Space Shuttle Columbia tragedy and as I read to my students about the astronauts on board the Columbia, I found myself suddenly choked up, tears on the verge of streaming down my face.
Soon every girl in the class was crying silent tears in sympathy with me. When I could talk again, I explained to them why I was so upset.
As a child I had always wanted to be an astronaut.
I don’t think I’m alone in that. Of all the fantastical things we dream of as children, I think being an astronaut is the most unique because it is the only thing of fantasy that might one day be real for us.
Today is the 25th anniversary of the Challenger disaster that claimed the lives of seven astronauts including teacher Christa McAuliffe. To children today, the Challenger must seem as foreign and distant as the Kennedy assassination seemed to me when I was a child.
But as the end of the space shuttle program grows near, we must never forget Columbia and Challenger. We must remember them not for their tragic ends, but for the dream they stood for.
Human beings are unique in their need to always explore the unknown. We have a great capacity for imagination and a great need to test the limits of our own understanding. From the very first explorers who pushed out over the Atlantic to the settlers here in America who pushed west over the Great Plains, we are always pushing the boundaries of our world.
When Ronald Reagan spoke of the Challenger, he quoted a poem by John McGee. Reagan said, “We shall never forget them nor the last time we saw them, as they prepared for their mission and waved goodbye and ‘slipped the surly bonds of earth … to touch the face of God.’”
That quote still brings tears to my eyes.
“To touch the face of God.”
Imagination, exploration … it is all irrevocably linked to faith.
At the heart of it all, our need to “see what’s out there” is also a need to know God.
God bless the space program.
God bless all who serve.
And God bless all who dream.
