I, like millions of habitants on Earth, have been following the journey of the Artemis 2 crew, who yesterday flew past the moon. They not only broke the record of humans traveling the farthest away from Earth (252,760 miles (406,778 kilometers), but they also saw the far side of the moon, an accomplishment never before attained. I watched in absolute fascination the live stream from NASA as the four astronauts described in great detail what they saw with their own eyes.

I have come to admire those four individuals, while hearing their stories and the paths they walked in getting to this particular mission of space travel. Reid Wiseman (Commander) is a retired Navy captain from Baltimore, Maryland. He previously spent 165 days aboard the International Space Station (ISS) and completed two spacewalks. He lost his wife, Carroll to cancer in 2020 and raised his two daughters as a single dad. Christina Koch (Mission Specialist) is the first woman to be involved on a moon mission. She has a remarkable record of logging 168 days aboard the ISS and participating in the first all-female space walks. Victor Glover (Pilot) is the first Black astronaut to journey to the moon. He also logged 168 days on the ISS and completed four spacewalks. It is worthy of note that he brought his Bible with him on this mission and has been quoting scripture frequently. Jeremy Hansen (Mission Specialist, Canadian Space Agency) is the first non-U.S. astronaut to fly around the Moon. A former CF-18 fighter pilot, Hansen was selected as a CSA astronaut in 2009, waiting seventeen years to go on this his first spaceflight. (Crew Members and Roles)

Yesterday marked the mission milestone of the moon fly by, and there were many times I marveled at the images of the moon and the different descriptions each astronaut offered to clarify what they were seeing first hand. I teared up when Victor Glover sent a greeting to his wife, who was at Mission Control watching from the visitor gallery there, “Hey Babe, I love you from the moon.”

Perhaps the most poignant moment was when Jeremy Hansen described two newly discovered, unnamed craters and asked NASA if they could be named “Integrity”, after their spacecraft, and the second one to be named after Wiseman’s late wife, Carroll. If you haven’t watched that YouTube video of the crew hugging one another after Hansen’s request, I challenge you to watch it without tearing up.

In a world that seems to be on the brink of daily disasters, upsets, global challenges and heart break, this journey has somehow united the world in love. Glover, on Easter Sunday gave an impromptu message: “In all of this emptiness — this is a whole bunch of nothing, this thing we call the universe — you have this oasis, this beautiful place that we get to exist together,” he said of Earth. “I think, as we go into Easter Sunday, thinking about all the cultures all around the world, whether you celebrate it or not, whether you believe in God or not, this is an opportunity for us to remember where we are, who we are, and that we are the same thing, and that we’ve gotta get through this together.”

Amen!