“John Glenn”
Most Americans know that name.

John Herschel Glenn was born July 18, 1921, in Cambridge, Ohio.

His father was a plumber, and his mother was a teacher.   John played with the various pieces of steel pipe and fittings like “Lincoln Logs.” The friends and neighbors “knew” that John would become a plumber like his father.  But that possibility all changed one day!

Very few people had ever ridden an airplane in the 1920s, but when John was eight years old, “his father drove him to a grassy airfield.  A biplane with an open cockpit sat in the field. ‘You want to go up?'”

John grabbed the opportunity and jumped in the back seat.  John took his first flight over the Ohio countryside.  “I was hooked on flying after that!”

That experience not only launched his childhood hobby of making model airplanes out of balsa wood but ultimately launched Glenn into the skies  — and into the real and dangerous world of aviation.

Later in life, John would earn his private pilot’s license. During WWII, he became a U.S. Navy Aviation Cadet, and, in the coming years, he became a fighter pilot, a flight instructor, a test pilot, and what he may be best known for, a NASA astronaut!

On January 20, 1961, John Kennedy was America’s new president.  His presidency was on the heels of Russia’s launch into outer space — Sputnik 1, 2, and 3 in 1957.  Kennedy promised America a new age of space competition!

February 20, 1962, Friendship 7 (Mercuyr-Atlas 6) was the fifth human spaceflight, and the space capsule would orbit the earth for the first time.  It would last approximately 5 hours.

Glenn was selected because he “came out of it as tops among seven very fair-haired boys. He had the hottest record as a pilot, he was the most quotable, the most photogenic, and the lone Marine.”

Engineer T. J. O’Malley pressed the button launching the spacecraft, as he said the well-reported words . . . .

“The good Lord ride all the way.”

Capsule communicator, Scott Carpenter, uttered the famous words that became the title of one of the books about John Glenn. . . ,

“Godspeed, John Glenn.”

Many do not know that Glenn carried a note in his spacesuit!

It was written in several different languages because of the possibility of landing in a location drastically different from intended — and possibly the South Pacific.

It read . . .

I am a stranger. I come in peace. Take me to your leader and there will be a massive reward for you in eternity.”

Near and around Cape Canaveral was the designed place for the landing and retrieval.  However, there was uncertainty about his landing, and there was the real possibility that in he might end up in the South Pacific.  If he encountered an islander tribe and they felt threatened, he hoped that someone in the tribe could read that note and not kill him.

The words on Glenn’s note could easily be the watchwords of every missionary or pastor splashing down midst the communities of our world — “I am a stranger. I come in peace.”

Many of those communities are distant and different.  Some are local and well-known.  But the promise is the same to all who call upon Him. . . .

“There will be an eternal reward unto all whose sins are forgiven by the person and work of Christ on Calvary . . . .and massive . . . . because the reward is everlasting life in the new heavens and a new earth.”

Likewise, Jesus came into the world as a stranger, an unknown babe in a manger.

He came, and He still comes in peace!

And He alone can truly deliver on such a grand promise, the reward of eternal life for all who trust Who He is and What He has done.

His only request . . . . . . . take me as your leader, no longer a stranger, as your Saviour today!

“Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.”

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Interesting P.S.:

On October 29, 1998, at the age of 77, Glenn boarded his second space flight aboard the  shuttle, “Discover.” It lasted 9 days; he circled the earth 134 times and traveled 3.6 million miles.

While aboard the space shuttle Discover, Glenn stated . . .

“To look out at this kind of creation out here and not believe in God is to me impossible.”