Everything he had been trained to do...

One of the most popular preachers I’ve heard in a long time was an astronaut named Scott Carpenter. In February 1962, Carpenter became the second American to orbit Earth. Upon reentry, the pitch horizon scanner malfunctioned, and he had to manually take control of his mercury-Atlas 7 rocket. It was one of the most successful on the early NASA missions. Carpenter is a humble guy, but to hear him tell the story is to hear a powerful message on courage. He says, all he did on that flight was everything that he had been taught to do. And though he maneuvered the spacecraft with precision, he felt it (and his own life) might be lost. Finally he brought Mercury-Atlas 7 in for a slash landing—several hundred miles off course, but safe.


--John M. Perkins in Follow Me to Freedom p 28

[Note—what struck me is that he did what he was trained to do. When all else fails and you don’t know what to do, you do the obvious. Greatest commandments—love God, love neighbor. You seek God in prayer, fasting, worship. You find a way to serve and love people in the name of Christ.]