Space Junk

 "In your love you have kept me from the pit of destruction.  You have put all my sins behind your back."  (Isaiah 38-17).

On TV, My father and I were watching the astronauts maneuver the lunar module towards the surface of the moon.  As interesting as that was to a boy of 12, I couldn't focus on it.  Looking at the frail little module, I kept thinking about how big the spacecraft had been as it sat upright on the launching pad, and the giant booster rockets that had hurled it toward the moon in stages and then fallen away.

"Dad, what happens to the rockets?" I asked.

"Nothing happens to them son.  The astronauts don't need them anymore."

"But where do they go?  Does somebody come get them?  Won't the astronauts need them for next time?"

"No, as far as these astronauts go, there won't be a next time.  This it."  Dad answered.  "They aren't worried about those rockets son.  They are concentrating on landing on the moon."

"But where do the rockets go?  Won't they fall on somebody here?  Maybe us."  I asked, still not completely satisfied.

My father laughed with that mixture of exasperation and pride I recognize in myself when one of my querulous children won't leave something alone.  "Stop worrying about the rockets son.  Their job is done.  They are just space junk now.  All that matters is the landing."

I believe that one of the great things we do for our children in  teaching them about Christ as early as possible is to give them the chance to accept Him now, rather than later.  The choice is theirs, but the chance is ours.

It is not that salvation at 40 rather than 12 is any less sweet.  But with late-life repentance can come abundant regret for the dissolution of a life led outside His grace.  At 12, I had perhaps a wallet full of childish deeds to regret.  By 40, that baggage far exceeded the capacity of the overhead compartment--I was not just walking on the plane with it.  It was going to have to be checked at the gate.

As a result, despite a burgeoning faith, I found myself grinding on those things done and left un-done before I was saved, and it was inhibiting my growth in Christ.  It was as if the acid of regret was corroding my connection to the Lord.  Finally, and with the counsel of men who had trod that same path, I realized that I was like an astronaut who was worrying about the discarded rocket stages rather than the moon landing.  Those things that had propelled me to the place I found myself in Jesus had fallen away and were now simply Space Junk out in the infinite blackness.  I didn't need them anymore and I didn't need to worry about what had happened to them.  Like the  lunar module, I was light and small, with only the prospect of a moon landing to consider.  Freed of the Space Junk, I did not look a thing like the man I had been on the launching pad.  Not a thing.