R.P. Nettelhorst's Blog, page 111

Model Rockets

Flying model rockets are lightweight rockets made of non-metallic parts such as plastic, cardboard and balsa wood. The engines are small, solid fueled and not reusable: they come in sizes ¼ A through G, with a total impulse (metric standard) ranging from 0.310 Ns to 160 Ns. They are electrically ignited. The larger engines burn for no more than about three seconds—enough to send the small rockets up to three thousand feet high. The rockets are most commonly recovered by a parachute, which is deployed by an explosive charge. The charge is released by the engine after a time delay (allowing the rocket to reach maximum altitude). Multi-stage rockets are possible; booster engines are designed without the built-in time delay, so that the next stage ignites immediately upon burn out of the previous stage.

As a child, I had longed to be able to launch rockets. I was fascinated by all things related to space and astronomy. But it wasn’t until I was in junior high that I discovered model rockets thanks to a book I checked out of the public library. Once I found out they existed, I began building and launching them.

My middle daughter’s favorite high school class this past year was her astronomy class. She was fascinated to learn about the universe, and even more excited when her teacher announced that the class would be launching model rockets. I helped her build her first rocket from an Estes kit with the name “Big Bertha.” I selected that model for her because it is a basic, simple rocket, and because it is relatively large: nearly two feet tall.

Supposedly she was part of a team of four classmates who were supposed to build the rocket. In reality, it was mostly just my daughter and I who did all the work. The only thing her classmates contributed was to chip in a bit for the cost of the rocket, and to give it the most hideous paint job imaginable: forest green with an uneven red stripe swirling around it like a candy cane.

Since it was a group effort, my daughter had to live with it.

When the day arrived to launch the rocket, I came to watch. Her teacher had several ways for the students to earn extra points from their rockets: the best looking (which they obviously didn’t get), the one that flew the highest, the one that landed closest to the launch site, and the rocket which failed most spectacularly. Besides her classmates, several other teachers and even the principal came to watch the blast offs.

We used a C engine to launch Big Bertha. It had a flawless lift off and rose nearly a thousand feet into the sky. But the parachute failed to deploy properly when the nose cone popped off. Without the parachute, it plummeted like a rock and landed near the launch site. In fact, it hit with a surprisingly loud thunk about three feet from where the principle was standing.

He jumped.

So my daughter and her team got extra points for having the most spectacular failure.

Surprisingly, the rocket was undamaged. So we tried launching the Big Bertha a second time. The second flight appeared to be perfect: the rocket rose rapidly, and this time, at apogee, the parachute ejected as it was supposed to. The rocket floated gently back to the ground—nowhere even close to the principal.

But when it landed, we discovered that it had been far less than a perfect flight: the engine mount had blown out the back of the rocket at the same time the chute had popped out the front. The rocket would not be able to fly again that day.

Nevertheless, my daughter and her classmates were happy for the extra points they had won thanks to almost taking out the principal. When my daughter and I got home we repainted the rocket so that it no longer looked like a bad drug trip from the 1960s—and I ordered a replacement engine mount.

I also ordered another rocket kit. It was also from Estes. Called “The Mean Machine,” it made Big Bertha look like a toy. The Mean Machine stands more than six feet tall and uses large E engines.

My daughter told people in her class about the huge rocket I had built and they did not believe her. But a couple of months later her astronomy teacher decided to launch rockets again, so my daughter told me to bring the Mean Machine. She felt vindicated when I showed up on launch day with the monster.

Aside from a minor prelaunch incident when one of the launch lugs came loose because of the wind, the maiden flight of the Mean Machine went off without incident. It soared 700 feet straight up and then landed safely on its parachute without suffering damage or frightening the principal hiding in his office.

Email

A few years ago when I was working on one of my books, I got an email from my overworked editor in London. The copy editor in New York didn’t like one of my sentences and had proposed a change. My London Editor suspected that the change was not in keeping with what I had intended and so she wrote and asked me about it. She was certainly correct; the change proposed by New York was not something I could live with.

Rather than getting into a perhaps fruitless argument with the copy editor, however, I suggested a somewhat simple change that my London editor agreed would likely make New York happy. My point remained in the remainder of the paragraph, so nothing would be lost, but the change I suggested would mollify the copy editor. Getting a book done requires a lot of compromising, given the number of hands involved in the process.

Unfortunately, my suggested change wound up shortening the sentence by twelve words. That meant that my London editor now had blank space that needed filling. After another couple of emails—as well as offering clarification on the point I was attempting to make in the sentence in question—I came up with a rewrite of the first three sentences that added the necessary words and solved the problem.

As usual, my London editor was very apologetic through the whole process and wrote me, “sorry to be such a pain.” As if it’s her fault. It’s the copy editor in New York who seems to have forgotten that it’s not her name on the cover of the book.

Everyone’s a critic, after all.

I get letters. Often times they are not very nice. Of course, as one of my friends pointed out, most people write letters to the editor, or to stores, or, in my case, to authors, only if they are angry with them. In 2008 I registered my last name as a domain on the web and put up an official author’s website, together with a different email address based on that domain name. That way people who read my books can find out about the other books I’ve done and perhaps find out a little more about me if they are so inclined. Most authors have websites; they are a useful marketing tool. My author friends had been bugging me to do this for quite some time.

The very first email to that new email address associated with my website was not from a fan. Quite the opposite.

I was particularly amused by one sentence from my critic: “No! I am not a crack pot … that slang would better be applied to you and your works.” That sentence was actually one of the less nasty of the many sentences I had to endure—sentences which consisted of a series of negative assertions about my character. As my wife and those with whom I shared the wonderful missive commented, “how is it that someone can accuse you of things that are so completely opposite of who and what you actually are?” I’ve had letters before and after accusing me of all manner of character flaws, sometimes laced with profanity or even death threats. This first to my new email address lacked both the vulgar language and the death threats, thankfully.

When people don’t know you, it is easy for them to fill in the blanks and project upon you all manner of things they don’t like, that simply aren’t so. As to why they do it, it is hard to say. I personally don’t understand what motivates a person to go to the effort of writing a rude letter to a stranger. But then, I know it’s easy to at least think unkind things about those who are close to us, whom we do know well. If someone forgets to call us on our birthday, how often do we assume that they no longer value their relationship with us, that in fact, they’ve become our enemies and now probably hate us—only to discover later that they left a message on our answering machine and the birthday card they sent us got delayed because it was inadvertently delivered to our neighbor by mistake? It is very easy to misread the intentions of our closest friends and family. But that reality doesn’t often intrude upon the thoughts of those who write mean-spirited letters and then shake their fingers and tell us that they are not a crackpot.

Unlike letters from my editors asking me change something, I never bother to respond to letters from cranks—except perhaps to chuckle as I drop them in the trash.

God and the Founding Fathers

Many well-meaning people argue that the United States was founded by Christian men as a Christian nation. Undoubtedly, many of the founders were Christians. But some of the most well-known of the founders were demonstrably not. Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams are three that come to mind. And even those founders who were Christian were not interested in trying to create a Christian nation here. They knew all too well the European experience of a unified church and state. After witnessing the persecutions that so many who had come to these shores sought to escape, the founders were not at all interested in trying to duplicate that mess.

One can discover many positive statements about God in the writings of the founders, together with stirring words about the value of religion. However, talking favorably about religion does not make a person a Christian. There’s a bit more to it than that. After all, though Moslems believe in God and acknowledge Jesus as a great prophet, they would most strenuously deny being Christians. Ninety percent or more of the American public claims to believe in God; but nowhere near that percentage show up in church on Sunday morning.

Perhaps it might be beneficial to define “Christian.” The dictionary tells us that a Christian is “one who professes belief in Jesus as Christ or follows the religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus.” That then begs the question of what it means to believe in Jesus as Christ, and what it means to follow the religion based on his life and teachings. Generally speaking, regardless of denomination, Christians agree that Jesus came to redeem humanity from sin by dying on the cross and that he later rose from the dead. Christians believe that Jesus is the Son of God, one member of the Trinity made up of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Christians also tend to accept the Bible as authoritative, believing that it is the Word of God.

If an individual does not accept this traditional Christian message, most people who call themselves Christians would then question that such individual was a Christian. Simply saying nice things about Jesus isn’t enough. The Koran says nice things about Jesus, too. If a person claims to be a Democrat but always votes for Republicans and spouts the Republican party line, one would be justified in questioning whether that person was actually a Democrat. What you believe and practice really does matter in religion, as much as it does in politics.

Thomas Jefferson created his own version of the New Testament. He was uncomfortable with any reference to miracles, so with two copies of the New Testament and a pair of scissors, he snipped out all the references to miracles from the story of Jesus and pasted together what remained. The stories of healing blind men, walking on the water, and the resurrection from the dead wound up as scraps in Jefferson’s trash basket.

He did this cut and paste job during February 1804, as he says, on “2. or 3. nights only at Washington, after getting thro’ the evening task of reading the letters and papers of the day.” His finished product is still in print and is an interesting thing to read if you want to get a sense of his attitudes toward both Jesus and the Bible.

John Adams, the second U.S. President, rejected both the Trinity and the idea that Jesus was God. It was during Adams’ presidency that the Senate ratified the Treaty of Peace and Friendship with Tripoli, which states in Article XI that:

“As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion—as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen,—and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arrising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”

This treaty with the Islamic state of Tripoli had been written and concluded by Joel Barlow during Washington’s Administration. The U.S. Senate ratified the treaty on June 7, 1797; President Adams signed it on June 10, 1797 and it was first published in the Session Laws of the Fifth Congress, first session in 1797. Quite clearly, then, at this very early stage of the American Republic, the U.S. government did not consider the United States a Christian nation. Of course, the simple fact that the U.S. Constitution, Article VI, paragraph 3 states that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States” gives us a clue to that effect. If the founders had wanted to create a Christian nation they certainly did a lousy job of it.

The reality was, Europe was full of Christian nations and the founders were not interested in following that broken tradition.

Benjamin Franklin was a delegate to the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention. It is often noted that Franklin made a motion at the Constitutional convention that they should bring in a clergyman to pray for their deliberations. However, it is rarely noted that Franklin presented his motion only after they’d already been deliberating for four or five weeks, during which they had never once opened in prayer. More significantly, Franklin’s motion for prayer was voted down by the other delegates.

About March 1, 1790, Franklin wrote the following in a letter to Ezra Stiles, president of Yale, who had asked him his views on religion. His answer would indicate that he was not much of a Christian:

“As to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the System of Morals and his Religion, as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupt changes, and I have, with most of the present Dissenters in England, some Doubts as to his divinity; tho’ it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and I think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an Opportunity of knowing the Truth with less Trouble.”

He died just over a month later on April 17.

The founders hoped to avoid the mistakes they saw in Europe. They wanted a nation in which religion could be freely exercised, with no government intervention or coercion, and in which religion could not coerce the government, either. Rodger Williams, the Baptist founder of Rhode Island who had been tossed out of the Massachusetts Bay Colony by the Puritans for the sin of being a Baptist, wrote that government tends to corrupt religion. Thomas Jefferson, a century later, wrote that religion tends to corrupt the government. Looking at the European experience, the founders realized that both of them were right, and so they tried to create a system that kept both religion and government from interfering with one another.

Stockholm

I learned about something new today from what someone posted to me on Facebook. It’s called Christian Domestic Discipline. The focus is on “disciplining” one’s wife, including physical disciplining: that is, they advocate spanking. Now if they were simply advocating some odd Christian version of BDSM, then that would be fine and kinky. But that’s not what the site is about. Instead, despite repeated denials (which in itself kind of raises red flags) they seem to actually be advocating domestic violence and try to argue how it is a good and biblical thing. They use a whole raft of verses to try to justify their point of view and lifestyle.

It reminds me of stuff I’ve seen on MEMRI.org that is common in the Muslim world: http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1478.htm and http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/440.htm

I don’t know how much more strongly I can state it: beating one’s spouse, spanking one’s spouse, “disciplining” one’s spouse is simply wrong and is domestic violence. It is evil. Besides just being peculiar.

The website I saw was painful to read and there is so much wrong with it that it becomes overwhelming to talk about it all. So instead, I’ll focus on foundational principles: when one thinks about how spouses are to relate to each other, Jesus made it really, really simple:

“Jesus called them together and said, ‘You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave—just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.’” (Matthew 20:25-28)

It’s a passage I rarely see ever appearing in traditional excuses about how spouses should relate to one another. Instead, as with this site, they misuse the passage in Ephesians 5 about the wife submitting, missing the beginning verse that all Christians are to submit to one another, and that in fact it is being used as a synonym for love–which is the core of the biblical message after all (Jesus said it’s the theme of the Bible–see Matthew 22:36-40). Based on what Jesus said about love being the theme of the Bible, the basic interpretive principle for understanding it is not so tough: if you read a passage and you think it’s telling you its okay to do something that isn’t love, then you’ve misinterpreted it. Start over.

This Christian Domestic Discipline site misuses and ignores the context of just about all the biblical passages they reference. For instance, one person wrote this in an essay on the site: “Part of the curse was that Eve would no longer easily follow her husband, but rather would want to control him.”

This is flat out wrong–though I’ve seen the interpretation before. It is not a possible interpretation, even if a certain large church in southern California thinks so. There is a word in Genesis 3:16 that is being interpreted by that essayist and others to mean “desire to rule over” –which is nonsense. The other usages of the word in the Bible refer to sexual desire. Not quite the same thing. The curse on the woman was pain in childbirth. Despite that, she will still enjoy having sex. That’s all it is saying.

Another weird one used in the Christian Domestic Discipline website was how they applied Proverbs 13:24, about using a rod on children. The word “rod” is metaphorical for discipline (and we see it used that way in quite a few OT passages). It is not to be understood as meaning that it is good to take a big old stick, perhaps a curtain rod or a large wood dowel, to your children. Even those who advocate corporal punishment for their children, for the most part, do not take the passage about using a rod literally. Instead, they reduce the “rod” to their hand or a switch.

Another passage that these people seem to miss is from Paul:

“The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife.” 1 Corinthians 7:3-4.

Notice: the husband does not have authority over his own body: it belongs to the wife (and vice versa); again that whole mutual submission, not lording it over one another, and, you know, love. The other odd thing I noticed on this website was their emphasis on proper “authority.” That has more to do with something out of Bill Gothard’s Basic Youth Conflicts than it does the Bible. They simply don’t understand what they are talking about, in my estimation about much in the Bible.

And one final thing: people who are in abusive relationships commonly justify the abuser’s behavior and find ways to explain that it is really okay and they deserve it. That’s the feeling I got in reading through this website.

“Stockholm syndrome can be seen as a form of traumatic bonding, which does not necessarily require a hostage scenario, but which describes ‘strong emotional ties that develop between two persons where one person intermittently harasses, beats, threatens, abuses, or intimidates the other.’ One commonly used hypothesis to explain the effect of Stockholm syndrome is based on Freudian theory. It suggests that the bonding is the individual’s response to trauma in becoming a victim. Identifying with the aggressor is one way that the ego defends itself. When a victim believes the same values as the aggressor, they cease to be a threat.” (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome )

And of course the whole premise of the site about Christian Domestic Discipline is incredibly misogynistic: it is degrading to women. They obviously believe that women are less than men and in need of a man’s help in order to become good and proper and to behave as they should. There is no recognition that women are created in the image of God and are equal to men. There is no recognition that women are adults.

Of course there are those who might argue that the only reason women want to work outside the home, get careers and the like, is because the feminist movement has filled them with wrong-headed dreams and aspirations. Those darn feminists are the ones who’ve made women unhappy and dissatisfied with their “proper, God-given roles” in the home.

Uh huh.

Like the slave holders of a different era, who complained that “If it weren’t for those durn abolitionists filling the n**s with wool-headed ideas they wouldn’t be near the trouble; getting them all riled up about liberty and equality and who knows what other gosh durn foolishness!”

The reason a woman might like a career and be dissatisfied fulfilling the role of a slave is because she is a human being, created in the image of God, with the same common ideals and aspirations, hopes and fears, that fill the male half of humanity, since woman, too, is as much a part of humanity as man.

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. (Gen. 1:27)

Abraham Lincoln is quoted as saying, regarding slavery, that it was quite easy to realize it was wrong: ask yourself, would you care to be a slave? If the answer is no, then that tells you slavery is wrong. Likewise, if you ask yourself, “would I care to be ‘disciplined’ like a dog or other animal? (which is how Christian Domestic Discipline seems to treat women)” If the answer is no, then that tells you it is wrong. If a man wouldn’t like the restrictions placed on women in some churches and other places, then he should know just from that it is wrong. You see, it violates the Golden Rule: do to others as you’d have them do to you (see Matthew 7:12).

Trouble

The Trouble with Tribbles is one of my favorite episodes from the original Star Trek. Captain Kirk is focused on an issue with the Klingons. Meanwhile, cute round fuzzy balls that purr have started reproducing and thereby become another problem—but only temporarily. In the end, the tribbles solve Kirk’s problem with the Klingons.

Life is like that sometimes. There are always problems, most minor, occasionally major, and sometimes it’s hard to tell what’s a big problem and what isn’t. And the number of problems that come our way are seemingly endless. What we wouldn’t do to be free from the stress!

As the old joke would put it: take my week. Please.

First, the main water line to my house broke on Monday morning: roots. I spent the day digging down to the break, sawing roots, and making multiple trips to Home Depot. I also scraped my arms and my fingers ached for days.

Recently I discovered an email from an “agent” offering to represent me. A quick search with Google confirmed my suspicion that this individual was a con artist. Legitimate agents find work for their clients and take a percentage of the money made. Con artists ask for money up front for “reading fees” and “office expenses” and the like. This agent was the fee charging sort. It is annoying to find that at this point in my career, I still attract that sort of person. Especially since I already have an agent. A real one.

My oldest daughter rescued a stray cat that then had kittens in my garage. We’ve found homes for three out of the four kittens and even one for the mommy cat. Yesterday she went into heat. She is now overly enamored with me. She also keeps trying to get into our house from the garage and this evening scared my middle daughter when it came bounding into the kitchen.

Then there are the bills that need paying. And my oldest daughter is leaving for her Junior year of college in August. Did I mention bills needing to be paid? College is expensive and every time I turn around, there seems to be something else unexpected that I need to pay. My wife and I have been married thirty years; our anniversary is on June 25th. But with all the expenses, I was despairing of finding anyway to do anything to celebrate the milestone. We’d be lucky to even scrounge enough together to go to McDonalds.

In the midst of things going wrong it is very easy to start berating oneself. Especially when one has a history of depression. Not that a depressed person needs help becoming depressed or that depression is the consequence of events. But stress can be a trigger if one has a habit of negative thoughts.

Obviously, curling up into a fetal position is the wrong way to deal with trouble. Instead, one needs to focus on each problem, one at a time, recognize the challenge, and then act to fix it. The solution is not always pleasant, it is not always the ideal, it isn’t always what one wants, but it is what one has to do.

And in the midst of any trouble, big or small—and sometimes it feels as if the little daily stresses are the worst—it is important to look up from the muck and see the bigger picture. When faced with a black mark on a white sheet of paper, it is hard to recognize that the majority of the paper is still white. You have to work at reminding yourself about the things in life that are wonderful. You have trouble at work because you have a job. Without a job you wouldn’t have the job stresses, but is not having a job really what you want?

Just because something bad happens to you, it doesn’t mean that you’re a loser. And if your mistakes do seem to overwhelm, then seek help. If you had a broken arm, you wouldn’t be slow to find a doctor. And talk to your friends and your family. Don’t try to carry it all by yourself. The burden is always lighter if you’re not alone. A friend called me on Tuesday wondering why I hadn’t asked him for help when my water pipe broke. I had been so focused on trying to fix the pipe, I didn’t even think about trying to get help.

Of course my week had other things in it besides the troubles. Sunday night our friends and family gave my wife and I a surprise party for our 30th wedding anniversary: and it really was a complete surprise, utterly unexpected. Somehow my children and friends kept it all a secret and we didn’t suspect a thing until everyone shouted “surprise.” We had a great time, and we even got gift cards to several restaurants and a movie theater. Not only did we get to actually celebrate our 30 years together, we also will get to go out together a few times in the coming weeks, something we might not otherwise have gotten to do.

So that was a much better surprise than finding water bubbling in one’s front yard on Monday morning. It helps keep the troubles in perspective, and to remind us that all is not lost.

However, that cat is still in heat.

Surprise Party

Sunday evening our friends and family gave my wife and I a surprise party for our 30th wedding anniversary; our actual anniversary will occur on Tuesday, June 25. Apparently this party had been in the planning stages since April. Even our children where in on it. My wife and I had no clue and were completely flabbergasted. We had a wonderful time.

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Incomplete Thoughts on Theodicy

Freedom is constrained by love: it is constrained by myself; it is constrained by other humans; it is constrained by God.

I do not kill you even though it might amuse me to watch you twitch, because I self-constrain out of my love for you. If I do not so self-constrain, those around me will either constrain me when they see me go for your neck; or if they are a bit late, then they will constrain my freedom by putting me in prison or by ultimately taking my life.

The question in theodicy is simple: why there is evil, of why there is random suffering such as a small child being born with a debilitating genetic disorder, of where was God during the Holocaust or any other horrific example of human inhumanity. So why do we have so much freedom? Why does not God constrain our freedom more than he does? Why can we get away with so much? Why does so much happen without God stepping in and stopping it? We wonder if he is unable, unwilling, malicious, or simply not even there. Did he create the universe and then forget about it? Is it too much for him to handle? Or is there no God at all and we are alone with one another in a random, empty universe which cares not a whit for us one way or another.

But then, why are we bothered by suffering? Why do bad things happening surprise us and upset us so? If we eliminate God from the equation, does that make suffering and pain and evil okay? Why do we even have a sense of right and wrong? Why should we feel suffering is unjust? Why should we be concerned with justice?

God constrains primarily mediately, rather than directly. It is the way we usually see him in the Bible when he acts. Consider the book of Esther: God’s name is never mentioned and yet we recognize God’s hand in every event. That is how God is mostly in the world: unseen as he was unseen in the text of Esther. He constrains through self-constraint and through those around us. Sometimes he may intervene directly. But his direct intervention is rare and even then can be explained away. In the biblical record, we know of God’s intervention only because a prophet so told us. Otherwise, it could be explained by happenstance. For instance, notice the attitude of the Philistines when they decided to send the Ark of the Covenant back:

“Now then, get a new cart ready, with two cows that have calved and have never been yoked. Hitch the cows to the cart, but take their calves away and pen them up. Take the ark of the LORD and put it on the cart, and in a chest beside it put the gold objects you are sending back to him as a guilt offering. Send it on its way, but keep watching it. If it goes up to its own territory, toward Beth Shemesh, then the LORD has brought this great disaster on us. But if it does not, then we will know that it was not his hand that struck us but that it happened to us by chance.” (1 Samuel 6:7-9)

What was happening to the Philistines on account of the Ark of the Covenant was recognized by the Philistines—the supposedly primitive, superstition riddled ancients—as potentially being just happenstance. They did not assume that God’s intervention was the only possible explanation for what they were experiencing. This can be said about any divine intervention, even the most spectacular miracles one sees in the Bible. Consider that the Pharisees and other religious leaders in first century Palestine saw and knew of Jesus’ miracles—and still rejected him and did not believe; even Jesus’ family rejected him until after his resurrection. God’s intervention can be explained away.

Freedom is never absolute. But God wants us to be as free as possible, in a world that has the least evil and suffering possible, given the constraint of having human freewill as part of the mix.

Vostok

It has been more than half a century since Yuri Gagarin rode in a Vostok capsule into orbit and into history. On April 12, 1961 he became the first human being to make it into space. His Vostok 1 circled the Earth just once. He landed back in Russia one hour and forty-eight minutes after his launch.

The rocket which took him into space was a modified version of the rocket that had taken the first satellite into orbit less than four years earlier, on October 4, 1957. And in fact, Gargarin’s launch vehicle belongs to the same family of R-7 rockets which even today are ferrying the Russian Soyuz spaceships and Progress cargo vehicles to the International Space Station. The Russians are very conservative: once they have a system that works, they just keep on reusing it. The Vostok that carried Yuri Gagarin was originally designed for use both as a spy satellite and as a manned spacecraft. It has, in fact, continued to be used, albeit modified, for a range of other unmanned satellites. It was about seven and a half feet in diameter. The equipment module to which it was attached was about seven and a third feet long, with a diameter of about eight feet.

On reentry, the astronaut did not ride the Vostok all the way to the ground because its parachute didn’t slow it enough. Instead, he or she ejected at about 23,000 feet and descended the rest of the way by individual parachute, while the capsule landed—hard—borne by its own chute.

A total of six Vostok missions were flown, the last of which, in 1963, carried the first woman into space, Valentina Tereshkova.

The Vostok program was followed by the Vokshold program, which took the design and parts from the Vostok spacecrafts, and then added a solid fueled retro rocket to the top of the descent module. The Russians crammed three people inside it instead of one. The Voksholds were used only twice to carry astronauts into space: once in 1964 and then again 1965. The solid rocket retro softened the landing enough that that three astronauts could remain in the craft all the way to the ground instead of having to bail out.

The first Soyuz flew in 1967. Like the Vokshold, it was simply a further modification to the original Vostok. Its main differences are the addition of a separate descent module and a much enlarged instrument and service module. The spherical orbital module, however, is nearly the same as the one on the original Vostok, perhaps six inches larger in diameter. The descent module, in which the three astronauts ride both up into space and then back down to Earth is only about seven feet long and seven and a quarter feet in diameter, while the Instrumentation and service module, which carries the solar panels for power, is a bit more than eight feet long and nearly nine feet in diameter. Thus, the descent module with its three seats for three astronauts is actually slightly smaller than the one passenger Vostok that Gargarin rode alone in fifty years ago.

Before Gargarin’s trip into orbit, the Russians launched several empty, unmanned Vostoks between May 1960 and March 1961 before deciding it was safe enough to try putting a man into one and shooting him off. Yuri Gagarin was only twenty-seven years old the day he went into space. He’d trained with other men but didn’t know that he’d been assigned to the first flight until April 8, only four days before launch. The spacecraft carried enough food, water and air so that if the retro rockets failed and he was stuck in orbit, he would survive until that orbit naturally decayed from friction and the spacecraft came back down on its own. The entire mission was designed to be automated, with the onboard controls locked out, since no one was sure how well a human being would be able to function in a weightless state. However, the Russians gave Gagarin an envelope with the lockout codes sealed inside, just in case something went wrong and he had to take manual control.

Although the launch and orbit went smoothly, there were some problems on reentry. Ten seconds after the retrorockets fired to drop the Vostok out of orbit, the service module was supposed to separate and fall away from the reentry module. Unfortunately, a bundle of wires holding the two parts of the spacecraft together failed to come apart, keeping both sections connected. Gyrations as the craft started entering the atmosphere finally broke the wires and the service module came loose. After that, the remainder of the reentry proceeded normally. At 23,000 feet from the ground, Gagarin was ejected and parachuted to a safe landing, near a very startled farmer and her daughter. He told them he had just come back from space and needed to find a phone so he could call Moscow to let them know he’d made it back okay.

Breakage

A couple of years ago my then nearly eighty year old father (who is now 81) was diagnosed with lung cancer, despite the fact that he had never smoked a day in his life. Perhaps, it’s the result of his career in the Air Force and his exposure to many years of second-hand smoke, back in the days when smoking was far more common in the workplace than it is now. Or, it could just be one of those things: cancer is not always the result of something breathed or ingested.

He had rounds of chemotherapy and radiation therapy and ultimately was declared cancer free. It was in the midst of all of that treatment, which involved repeated visits to the hospital, that my parents’ twenty-something year old refrigerator chose to stop working. As seems to be the norm, the breakage of the devices upon which our modern lives are dependent never happen at convenient times. So on top of taking my dad to the doctor nearly every day, my mom also had to find time to go refrigerator shopping. She found a good refrigerator at a reasonable price and the whole affair was taken care of relatively easily.

It’s in the middle of real major crises that problems you otherwise might think of as major crises suddenly drop into their proper perspective. Although a dead refrigerator is an enormous inconvenience, there really are worse things and more important things.

It reminded me of an incident from over ten years ago. My wife and I had just been informed that the lengthy and expensive wrongful death lawsuit against us over the SIDS death of our foster son had finally been dismissed after nearly three years of turmoil. Deciding to go out for dinner to celebrate our victory, we had a pleasant meal, the first one without stress in years—only to have the transmission in our van blow apart on the way home. It was a twelve hundred dollar problem when we didn’t have twelve hundred dollars or much of any money left at all. We wondered if eating out had been a bad idea.

Of course we had no way of knowing our transmission would die. And I was able to keep the problem in perspective. After surviving a 30 million dollar wrongful death lawsuit, a twelve hundred dollar transmission bill didn’t seem so bad.

2011 was an unusually good year for me. In September, my third book, an illustrated hardback entitled, The Bible: A Reader’s Guide, was simultaneously released in the United States and the British commonwealth nations, by separate publishers. On November 1, my fourth book, A Year with Jesus, a a large paperback daily devotional was released by Thomas Nelson Publishing. Meanwhile, my oldest daughter began college and my two younger were surviving high school. My middle daughter had just gotten her learners’ permit for driving and was enrolled in a driving school.

In the midst of all those positive things, I was unexpectedly forced to do my part to help the nation’s economy, all thanks to unexpected breakages.

Oddly enough, one of the things that chose to begin to stop working was my nearly twenty year old refrigerator, joining with my parents’ broken machine. On nearly the same day my refrigerator gave up the ghost, my wife’s sister called her to complain that her refrigerator had also decided to stop working. Apparently, if you are at all related to my family, your refrigerator was going to give up the ghost near the end of 2011.

But that’s not all! At about the same time, the also nearly twenty year old television in my bedroom decided to die in somewhat spectacular fashion. My wife had just turned on the set as we were getting ready to go to bed. I was still in my office when she told me to come to the bedroom and pointed. Our television was displaying a bright thin vertical line down the middle of the screen. As I pondered what that meant, the TV suddenly made a pair of loud pops—and our bedroom filled with the stench of burning plastic. I quickly unplugged the set.

Now, my wife and I had actually been talking about replacing the TV. Some day. As old as it was, it was obviously not a modern flat screen with high definition. But our thought had been to possibly replace it as our Christmas present to ourselves. Or when we got our tax refund in the Spring.

Thankfully, during 2011 our financial situation was healthy enough that we could afford the problems, though frankly I had not wanted to spend all that money all at once on such things–what with the then approaching autumn and winter holidays. But since we had the money, the breakages were not been so inconvenient as such things usually are. And even without the financial resources, I would hope that I could still have chosen to put the breakages in perspective and recognize that they really weren’t so significant given the bigger picture.

Life is a lot more than the stuff that so obsesses us.

I Have a Mustard Seed

Most of the time I feel as if I have no faith.

I look at my life and my circumstances and I feel hopeless. I don’t feel as if I ever learn anything. No matter how often I’ve seen God work, I forget within a day, usually as soon as the next crisis hits. My sense of failure and hopelessness overwhelm and I am convinced that I don’t deserve God’s help. I tell myself that he should, in fact, abandon me in reality just as I imagine he should in the fantasy that fills my head.

One day the disciples came to Jesus and asked him to increase their faith.

He didn’t.

Instead, he told them that if they had but a mustard seed’s worth, they could move a mulberry tree. (Luke 17:5-6)

What was the point of telling them that?

Perhaps that the size of one’s faith is of no real consequence. What matters is the size of God. You are not the one who moves mountains, you are not the one that created the universe, it is not you that lifts you up when you are down. It is God. Stop imagining that it’s all your fault and that if only you had more faith then great things would finally happen to you. God is not tapping his foot waiting for you to play mind games with yourself until you stop worrying and start trusting. If you think it is all up to you, if only you were a better person, if only you could perfect your faith, if only you could overcome all your doubts, if only you weren’t such a loser, if only, if only, if only…

You cannot even add an hour to your life (Matthew 6:27). Your control over your life, what you do, what happens to you, is very limited. But God is not so limited as you.

Do you feed your children regularly? Is it dependent upon them having to feel a certain way, think a certain way, do special things or refrain from them? Do you make them sleep outside with nothing but their clothes if they misbehave? Do you contemplate ways to make them suffer until they figure out what it is you want from them? Do you give them reasons to not trust you, to not believe you, to not rely on you? Do you treat your children as a delinquent might torture a fly by pulling its wings off or by shining sunlight through a magnifying glass until it bursts into flame?

God loves you. God will take care of you. It is not up to you. Remember, God also said that he sends the rain on the just and the unjust (Matthew 5:45). If you’re a Christian, you’re in Christ. You’ve been justified. There’s nothing left for you to do. He feeds birds and adorns flowers and they do nothing to deserve it: they have very little faith, but he still takes care of them. (Matthew 6:26, 28-30)

God knows what you need. He knows what he is doing. Your faith is tiny. But thankfully, God is quite a bit bigger than a mustard seed.

You do not have to entertain doubts. You have no obligation to their care and feeding. You do not have to offer them tea and crumpets. You don’t have to answer their phone calls or respond to their knocking at your door. Worry does not need to be your constant companion. You could choose to walk away from it, abandon it, kick it in the teeth.

Psalm 23 concludes with “ Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life.” “Follow” is what you’ll find in most translations, though the Hebrew word is a bit stronger. In fact, it has a generally negative connotation. It is used mostly in the context of a hunter following his game, a predator chasing prey, an army pursuing the enemy. What this means is that because we are human, we will spend our lives chasing worry and doubt, even as God pursues us with his love and goodness.

God will never give up the chase. Sometimes he’ll catch us and keep us for a while, as he lavishes us with his love and goodness—before we squirm away and start our dogged pursuit of misery all over again. Good thing God keeps catching us.