It was Christmas Eve, 1968. American astronauts, orbiting the moon, had just read from the first chapter of Genesis. There was a wave of favorable reaction. The Space Center at Houston was crowded with reporters. From the beginning of the American space effort other nations had been watching with interest. One nation in particular, which I shall not name, seemed especially fascinated by all that was going on. Its reporters, of course, were on hand in Houston that evening. They didn’t understand just what the astronauts had been reading, but they were caught up in the enthusiasm of others and somehow sensed that it must be something very important.

They waited in the hallway for a change of shifts, hoping to speak to someone about what had just occurred. When a NASA official approached them, one of them stepped up and said politely, “Tell us, sir, would it be possible to obtain a script of what the astronauts were reading?”

The official suppressed a smile and said with a straight face, “Yes. When you go back to your hotel room, you will find on the nightstand, or possibly in the drawer of the nightstand, a black-bound Book. Just open that and on the first page you will find the script from which they read.”

The reporters were profuse in their appreciation. “Thank you so much,” they said. “It was so thoughtful of NASA to provide the astronauts’ script in our hotel room!”

We smile. But seriously, wasn’t it thoughtful of God to tell us just how He created the earth, and then to make the record of Creation so easily available that the Gideons could place a copy in every hotel room?

By Marjorie Lewis Lloyd, Signs of the Times, March 1977. With permission from Dale Galusha dalgal@pacificpress.com