Left Behind

by Pastor Tom

“For unclean spirits came out of many who were possessed, crying with a loud voice, and many who were paralyzed or lame were healed. So there was much joy in that city.” -Acts 8:7-8

Human beings have only been exploring outer space since the Russians managed to place the satellite Sputnik in orbit on October 4th of 1957. However, in that short span of time, human beings have managed to create a huge supply of space garbage.

Thousands of fragments larger than an inch, and somewhere between ten billion and thousands of trillions of microscopic pieces of debris are now floating around our solar system neighborhood. Some chunks of space trash are as big as a truck, or even a small apartment building.

Space garbage is created when certain rocket components are spent, waste material is ejected, tools get away, things come loose and, on occasion when secret military satellites are blown up to avoid having them fall into enemy hands. The Russians tended to do just that for a good number of years.

Some space garbage is almost famous. The Gemini 4 crew had a glove float away during the very first space walk in history. Michael Collins lost a camera during the Gemini 10 mission. The lunar module, normally left to crash on the moon, for the failed Apollo 13 flight came back with them and is still up there flying around the earth, along with bag after bag of refuse tossed from various Soviet space stations.

Both Venus and Mars now have little piles of our junk littering their surfaces, and the moon has in excess of 20 tons of garbage lying around. Just a couple of jaunts to the moon, and already there are several junk cars (moon buggies), satellite parts, experimental equipment, abandoned lunar landing craft and the wreckage of several lunar modules, which in short order plummet to the surface after we leave without the benefit of an atmosphere to burn them up. There are even some golf balls up there, cameras, and a host of refuse that would make any landfill proud.

When we humans go somewhere, we always leave something behind. Normally, what we leave is a mess. It seems to be our nature to interrupt, deface, pollute, defile and in some cases even destroy. I suppose it happens so naturally in outer space because we’ve practiced it for so long here on earth.

It doesn’t have to be that way. In the book of Acts, we read about some people who always left something good behind. The believers we read about left deliverance, healing and joy.

Some people walk into a room and don’t leave very much in the way of good after they’re gone.

But, look on the bright side. At least they’re gone. On the other hand, some people bring a lot of love and joy with them when they come, and it tends to hang around for a while after they leave. Thank God for those who leave the joy.