Apollo 8: Frank Borman Reads Genesis Over the Moon

It was Christmas Eve, 1968, and three American astronauts were farther from home than any human beings had ever traveled. Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders were orbiting the moon inside a tiny spacecraft called Apollo 8. Outside their small windows, the moon's craters stretched gray and silent. And beyond it, rising slowly over the lunar horizon, hung the Earth — blue and white and impossibly beautiful against the darkness of space. Bill Anders lifted his camera and took a photograph. Later, people would call it Earthrise. It would become one of the most famous pictures ever taken. But that night, the crew had something else to share. Millions of people back on Earth were gathered around televisions and radios. The whole world was watching. It had been a hard, painful year — wars, protests, loss. People were hungry for something to hold onto. Frank Borman knew it. He had thought carefully about what words could possibly match this moment — men floating in the dark, the Earth glowing like a lantern, the moon gray and still just outside. One by one, the three astronauts took turns reading aloud from the very first verses of the Bible. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Their voices were calm and steady, carried by radio waves across two hundred and forty thousand miles of space, into living rooms, into churches, into the hearts of people who needed to hear something true. When Borman finished, he said simply, Good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you — all of you on the good Earth. Then the spacecraft slipped behind the moon, and for a quiet moment, there was only wonder. Sometimes the bravest thing a person can do is speak what they believe, even when the whole world is listening.