The Bible on the Moon

I am wrapping up 2025 in part by listening to Andrew Chaikin’s A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts. It is an absolutely fascinating read for lots of reasons, including the fact that the Apollo 10 crew had to be the sort of people who wanted to go all the way to the moon and then not land on it, despite having everything that Apollo 11 would have…

Or the fact that the moon is utterly desolate. “Magnificent desolation”, as one astronaut famously put it.

Also interesting is how hard it is to live with three other people in a small room for a week.

But of most interest to readers here might be the Scripture that one astronaut chose to read from the moon. There were of course many instances of the Bible being read in space. These instances do include the moon. Buzz Aldrin famously read John 15 to himself while taking communion there, and the Apollo 8 crew read Genesis 1 from lunar orbit.

While on the surface of the moon, Apollo 15 astronaut Jim Irwin spontaneously recited Psalm 121:1:

“I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help“

Irwin said this while exploring around the Apennine Mountains and taking geological samples. These samples included the famous “Genesis Rock“, which Irwin said they found almost as if it had been left for them.

I don’t think we’ll ever go back to the moon. (Hey, I’ve been wrong about a lot of things lately. So yell at me in the comments if you want to.) But I think it’s worth knowing that when human beings were there, even in the middle of an utterly inhospitable landscape, we can still know that our help still comes from the Lord. The moon is not beyond His reach.

Dr. Coyle Neal co-hosts the City of Man Podcast and is an Amazon Associate (which is linked in this blog). He teaches Political Science, Philosophy, and History in Southwest Missouri.