Mission Impossible
The first space walk took place on this day in 1965.
Imagine you are 200 miles above Earth, orbiting the planet in a spacecraft that is going about 18,000 miles an hour. Your co-astronaut helps you into a pressurized suit, makes sure your oxygen tank is operating properly, and then opens the hatch to the spacecraft. And there you are—ready to embark on your EVA—Extravehicular Activity, better known as a space walk.
Most of us wouldn’t give another thought to the concept of actually walking in space. (To be completely accurate, it’s really more like floating in space.) Astronauts perform this rather routine procedure all the time during space flights. It’s no more incredible than landing on the moon or docking at a space station located hundreds of miles above us in space.
Yet when Soviet cosmonaut Alekse Leonov performed the first space walk on March 18, 1965 high above Siberia, it was an incredible feat. To many people it was unbelievable. And when a human being first stepped onto the surface of the moon four years later, it was like watching the impossible happen. Now we talk about going to Mars, and no one doubts that someday it just might happen.
Sometimes our technology and scientific knowledge make us feel as though we can do anything. Nothing is impossible given enough time, knowledge, and money. But if we’re looking for the impossible to be done, there’s only One for whom everything is possible. He is the one who spoke and the world came into being. He is the one who has power over life and death. He is one who dared to live on this planet as a human and offer eternal life to everyone who believes.
With God, nothing—absolutely nothing—is impossible.
Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26, New International Version).
To Do
Think about something you’ve read about or learned about that amazes you. Now think about something God has done that amazes you.
Also on this day . . .
Today is National Buzzard Day.
1837—Grover Cleveland, the 22nd and 24th president, was born.
1881—Barnum & Bailey’s Greatest Show on Earth opened in Madison Square Garden in New York City.
1961—Poppin’ Fresh, the Pillsbury Doughboy, was introduced.
From Betsy Schmitt and Dave Veerman, 365 Trivia Twist Devotions: An Almanac of Fun Facts and Spiritual Truth for Every Day of the Year (Cincinnati: Standard, 2005). Scripture quotations are from the New Living Translation unless otherwise noted.