The Challenger

January 28, 2018

The Challenger

Proverbs 6:20-22 (NIV)

²⁰ My son, keep your father’s commands and do not forsake your mother’s teachings. ²¹Bind them always on your heart and fasten them around your neck. ²²When you walk, they will guide you; when you sleep they will watch over you; when you wake they will speak to you.

Are there things in your life that are turning points that have made an impression on you that you will never forget? Are there things in life that have gotten you to where you are that maybe you have forgotten and may have caused things to feel more routine than they should. Scripture tells us in Proverbs 6 not to forget those things we have learned as they will be our guide.

One event that has made an impression on me is due to the title. It is hard to believe that 32 years ago today (January 28, 1986) the Space Shuttle Challenger blew up in mid flight only 30 seconds after launch killing 7 astronauts and changing the way we did space exploration ever again. What killed 7 astronauts on the Challenger just a couple decades later (February 1, 2003) almost to the day ended up killing 7 more on the Space Shuttle Columbia upon reentry shutting down the space program indefinitely.

Both flights have made an impact on the history of our country forever, yet it would be so easy to forget that which has happened either because it was before some people’s time or simply had no direct impact on their lives. Seeing that the Challenger disaster happened the day after my 14^th birthday and how NASA wanted to teach school children about space exploration and get them excited, I don’t think I will never forget. You see it was NASA’s goal to send a teacher upon the Shuttle, so children would remember this specific day and desire to become an astronaut. Unfortunately, the effort did exactly opposite as someone the children could related with was sent to their death in such a vivid and tragic way.

            The reality is time allows for pivotal moments to be the milestones to allow people to succeed and become creative and inventive. Here are a few examples.

-          Beethoven, a deaf man used his disability to become an accomplished musician

-          Albert Einstein, a Jewish man born in Germany had to flee from his home to the United States who was the catalyst to stop World War II by developing the atom bomb.

-          Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., called for and end to segregation and racial equality, but never got to see the progress of his dream come to fruition where segregation of schools, neighborhoods, transportation and places of gathering or restrooms have changed drastically for the better.

-          Billy Graham, a young man who many thought would amount to nothing and counted him out became the most pivotal and influential pastor of the 20^th century where millions have given their lives to God and thousands have going into ministry either as a direct result or an indirect result.

The list goes on and on. The reality is each one had a couple things in common that made them who they were; adversity and remembering who they were is bigger than what had happened to them. If those who had gone before us, either listed or not, allowed adversity to define who they were, they would not have made the impact they did, and the results would have been much different.

Proverbs talks exactly about this. We are reminded to not forget the teachings of our mother or the commands or direction handed down to us by our father. The reason for this is very simple; it allows us to understand who we are and our standards. If we can do so we will not be deceived in those times of adversity. This doesn’t mean we will not go through hard times, only that we will not loose our identity in the process and get off course.

So now 32 years later we can take the lessons of the Challenger and apply them to our personal lives. Here are a few I think one could glean from that fateful day.

-          Never take the things you have learned from the past for granted. When a commission was put together to investigate what happened they found that 2 things went hand in hand. The first was temperature differentiation and the other is the maintenance of the Shuttle. Temperature always has a cause and effect on things in our lives. When we fail to balance out the outside temperatures of our lives with the inside temperatures of how we are feeling or what is going on we can find ourselves getting to the point of exploding. Just like temperature, we must recognize those things that need to be fixed or adjusted in our lives and not to ignore those things that are even slightly off. In the Challenger the commission found that there was a rubber seal called an ‘O-Ring’ which was affected by temperature. On that fateful day it was determined that the rubber seals shrunk because the temperatures were near freezing and the heat distributed by the boosters where heating up too fast where the ‘O-Rings’ could not get back to the proper shape allowing fuel to leak and explode. Our lives can be very much the same where things move so fast and we don’t allow ‘O-Rings’ within either to be replaced or stretch leading us to leak and eventually explode.

-          Don’t take things for granted. When NASA introduced the Shuttle program they sold it from the stand point of cost efficiency and doing more with less. What they did not expect was the idea would become too mundane and people both working on the ship and those paying attention would just be going through the motions and forget the original purpose for what they were created for. Likewise, we may find ourselves in a rut and what was on track for good we keep doing the same thing in a mundane way. As a result, we become dissatisfied, resent what we have been doing and the reason why we started out this way and eventually have a call for an end of what once was good, now being considered status quo. Today other outside companies are competing against government agencies to do those things that NASA once did great in a much better way.

So how do we avoid the leak of the ‘O-Ring’ or the lack of luster of what was once great? We need to go back to the fundamentals of where we are heading. We must remember those things that we were once taught. We must have others who are willing to challenge us to be better at what we had the dream to be. We must not box others out thinking we have all of the answers. We must be able to not allow tragedy to define who we are as life will always throw a curve ball and make us want to give up.

So what is your Challenger? Have you had an idea where once it had great potential and now has either become mundane or as leaked so much that is has exploded? You must get back to the basics and rediscover the greatness of those things that once was. The ironic thing is the third Space Shuttle created after the Columbia and Challenger (the two that later blew up) was called the Discovery. You see sometimes it requires the original dream to be created only to be followed up by a discovery of what that dream initially was.

In memory of the astronauts of the Space Shuttle Challenger: (January 28, 1986)

·         Commander Francis R Scobee

·         Michael J Smith

·         Ronald McNair

·         Ellison Onizukz

·         Judith Resnik

·         Gregory Jarvis

·         Christa McAuliffe

And in memory of the astronauts of the Space Shuttle Columbia: (February 1, 2003)

·         Rick D Husband

·         William C McCool

·         Michael P Anderson

·         Kalpana Chawla

·         David M Brown

·         Laurel Clark

·         Iian Ramon

May we not forget your service and impact you had for future generations!