Waiting in Anticipation in the Everlasting Wonder

From the desk of Chuck Fuller

I asked the team to take a break this week from talk of politics and business, and I suppose I should stay true that request in the holiday message I’m privileged to deliver to each of you around this time every year.
 
I’d like to share with you what drives me each day. It’s a story of anticipation, grace, fulfillment, and peace on earth as it is in heaven. I hope it will awaken in each reader’s heart the dawning splendor that Christmas represents to me.
 
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As many of you know by now, I grew up right near Raleigh – one of the few old originals in a city budding with transplants. I remember Christmas in Garner as an amazing time of year. I remember hearing Santa on the roof while I was struggling to go to sleep. I remember leaving out Santa’s cookies and milk.
 
I remember my dad returning late on Christmas Eve night from Fort Bragg where he opened a temporary Greyhound bus station to transport the soldiers home for a brief holiday each year during Vietnam. I remember my imaginary best friend, Mr. Wilson, my business partner – we were quite the team! I remember at age 13 how my faith became real.
 
But the feeling I remember most is anticipation. The air dripped with it as a child waiting for Christmas morning to arrive. It was the same story every year – except one, when anticipation for the night of the 24^th outshined all else.
 
My tenth year, 1968, had been brutal. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated. The war in Vietnam had escalated and race riots had broken out in cities across the country. Even at 10, it seemed to me chaos reigned everywhere.
 
But on Christmas Eve that year, I joined half-a-billion others staring at a television in anticipation and awe:
 
On December 21, 1968, Apollo 8, blasted off from present-day Cape Canaveral. The plan called for the three astronauts onboard to come within about 70 miles of the moon, circle it several times and return safely home, all while broadcasting their feats to the world below. By gaining operational experience, testing equipment and checking out potential landing sites, they also hoped to pave the way for a moonwalk the following year, just in time to meet former President John F. Kennedy’s challenge to do so before the end of the decade.
 
Yet citizens of all stripes united in support of Apollo 8. Tens of thousands of spectators turned out the morning of the launch, including two Supreme Court justices and aviation pioneer Charles Lindbergh, and newspapers went giddy over humankind’s potential. The New York Times, for instance, called Apollo 8 “the most fantastic voyage of all times.”
 
Minutes after a straightforward departure, Air Force Col. Frank Borman, the mission commander; Navy Capt. James A. Lovell Jr., the command module pilot; and Air Force Major William A. Anders, the lunar module pilot, eased into Earth’s orbit in order to check for spacecraft damage. Finding no problems, they then propelled themselves into uncharted territory, voyaging for three days through the vastness of space. No previous manned flight, either U.S. or Soviet, had ever left Earth’s gravitational field. On December 24, the astronauts became the first humans to see the dark side of the moon and the first to enter lunar orbit, circling the celestial body 10 times. By then, they had also become the first to see the Earth from afar as a whole planet, a viewpoint Anders famously captured in his “Earthrise” photo.
 
Under the insistence of NASA administrators and public-relations specialists, the Apollo 8 crew hauled a TV camera up into space with it, doing six live broadcasts over the course of the mission…
 
As Apollo 8 rounded the moon for a ninth time, Borman got the prime-time Christmas Eve broadcast started by saying the crew would take the audience with it through a lunar sunset. He described the moon as “vast,” “lonely” and “forbidding,” and added that it “would not appear to be a very inviting place to live or work.” Lovell chimed in that the “vast loneliness of the moon is awe-inspiring, and it makes you realize just what you have back there on Earth.” Anders, meanwhile, declared himself quite impressed with lunar sunrises and sunsets.
 
Pointing their camera out the window, the astronauts next began a running diary of what they could see, from the pitch-black sky to the moon’s various mountains, craters and seas. To conclude the broadcast, they took turns reading the opening verses of the Bible.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.  The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
 
And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.
 
And God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so. And God called the expanse Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.

And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. God called the dry land Earth,^[d] and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good.
(Genesis 1:1-10 ESV)
 
Borman then signed off, saying, “Good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas and God bless all of you, all of you on this good Earth.” As Borman and Lovell later explained, they got no instructions from NASA except to do something “appropriate.” They said they selected this particular passage from the Book of Genesis because it was the foundation of “many of the world’s religions,” not just Christianity.
 
Shortly past midnight on Christmas morning, the crew ignited an engine burn to leave lunar orbit and start for home. Lovell announced the burn’s success, telling an anxious mission control, “Please be informed there is a Santa Claus.” The astronauts then settled down to a Christmas dinner of real—not freeze-dried—turkey and stuffing, plus miniature bottles of brandy. On December 27, they reentered Earth’s atmosphere at speeds of more than 24,000 miles per hour and splashed into the Pacific Ocean, where an aircraft carrier picked them up. As intended, the mission begot even greater successes. (Source: History.com)
 
Anticipation doesn’t need to be an experience only the young enjoy. Hundreds of millions of “kids from one to 92” felt it viscerally that Christmas Eve 55 years ago.
 
I don’t think things are quite as chaotic as they were in 1968 – or maybe they are, I don’t know for sure. But I do know anticipation grows from optimism, from the expectation that something of everlasting wonder might be just around the corner. We only have to believe it.
 
I’ll leave you with a passage from Isaiah, a prophet of Jerusalem and counselor to kings from 740 to 680 BC. Prophets in Israel tried to keep alive the memory of the great exodus, and to reinterpret the ancient faith’s meaning for new times. They also spoke words of hope and comfort:
 
The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; to grant to those who mourn in Zion—to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit; that they may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified. (Isaiah 61:1-3 ESV)
 
We can derive joy from spiritual anticipation, too. Just like a child waiting for Santa, or a nation waiting for the world’s first broadcast from space, we wait for – believe in – the fulfillment of this blessed hope Isaiah gives us.
 
May we keep the anticipation burning within our hearts – the glorious and wonderful hope brought into the world with Jesus’ birth. May we cultivate the desire of the fullness of his presence through fellowship with his Spirit this holiday season.
 
Merry Christmas!