I’m writing this on Saturday, July 20, 2019, and it’s been exactly fifty years since Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon. It was a stunning achievement, and it seemed like all of us were united in our excitement about the event. As a high school student during the late 1950s, one of my motivations was the space race, and I made a career in mathematics. Nevertheless, at the time I never dreamed that man would soon land on the moon. This made the event even more amazing.

Because of the fifty year anniversary, there has been a lot of newspaper and TV coverage of the celebrations. I’ve been especially struck by the fact that almost all of the TV reporters giving the stories weren’t born when it happened, and they’re not unique. You have to be a late middle-ager to have been alive when man last walked on the moon. How could such a great success been essentially a dead end? We’ve made progress in understanding space since that time, but most of our knowledge has come independent of landing on the moon.

I have fond memories of Armstrong and Aldrin walking on the surface of our nearest neighbor in space that Sunday evening in1969, but I can’t separate any memories of that evening from those of our nearest neighbors, the Swensons (Paulette says the same). At the time I was a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin, and Paulette and I lived in a small apartment. Our landlords, the Hinrichs, had converted the second story of their house into the apartment, after their children had left home. It was in a blue-collar neighborhood on the east side of Madison. The Swensons lived in a small bungalow next door. Mr. Swenson had retired from the university; he was a gardener who tended plants in the horticultural department’s experimental plots. Both the Hinrichs and the Swensons were very nice to us, but this story is about the Swensons.

The Swensons had always been friendly to us, and somehow they had learned that we didn’t have a TV set – maybe it was from an earlier conversation or maybe someone had told them. In any case they invited us over to spend the evening with them to watch the landing. It was a wonderful evening. We stayed until both Armstrong and Aldrin had walked, which was after 11:00pm and certainly after the Swensons’ normal bedtime. What we saw on TV was very interesting, but the conversation and friendship in the Swensons’ living room was extra special.

In Chapter 10 of Luke, Jesus is asked, “Who is my neighbor?” and He answers with the parable of the Good Samaritan. Well, the Swensons got the memo. Remember this was the 1960s, the time of student protests and there was tension, and sometimes even conflict, between generations. What made the Swensons reach out to a young student couple more than fifty years their junior, who were from out of state, and who had a long, funny name to boot? I think I know.

Please read Luke 10:25-37 and remember: God loves YOU unconditionally.

Jim