Dec 23, 2016 3 min read

On Dec. 24, 1968, Apollo 8 astronauts Jim Lovell, Frank Borman and Bill Anders were given a privilege few human beings have ever had – they were able to see Earth from space.

A color photograph, “Earthrise,” was captured during their orbit around the moon. With the moon’s craggy, gray surface in the foreground, Earth is deep blue and swirling with clouds, surrounded by the empty blackness of space.

“The vast loneliness is awe-inspiring and it makes you realize just what you have back there on Earth,” Lovell said.

That night, as most Americans in the Eastern time zone were wrapping up their Christmas Eve festivities, Lovell, Borman and Anders concluded a live broadcast from the lunar orbit with a message to the people back home, more than 200,000 miles away.

Anders began reading from the Book of Genesis: “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, let there be light, and there was light. And God saw the light and it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness.”

Lovell continued: “And God called the light day, and the darkness he called night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.”

Borman concluded: “And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he seas: and God saw that it was good.”

Borman signed off, “And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, and Merry Christmas – and God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth.”

Hearing the recording, which is available from several sources online, is profoundly moving, whether you are of the faith, are an adherent of another faith or have no faith whatsoever. It summons up all the grandeur, mystery and fragility of our existence.

It reminds us that we’re all bound together by the fact that we share this planet, regardless of how life otherwise divides us.

The message from the astronauts came at the end of a particularly turbulent year. In the course of 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy were assassinated; the Vietnam War claimed the lives of 16,000 American troops, 27 percent of all the nation’s casualties in that conflict; Lyndon Johnson, elected four years before in a landslide, declined to seek another term, his presidency consumed by Vietnam; riots broke out in Baltimore and Cleveland; the “Prague Spring” of liberalization and reform in Czechoslovakia was crushed by Soviet tanks; and France teetered on the edge of revolution following student uprisings.

At times in 1968, the world seemed to be teetering on the brink of chaos. And yet we survived.

We can also survive our current season of division and rancor.

Merry Christmas, everyone.