In preparation for their mission to the moon, astronauts had to prepare for a near-zero-gravity environment. Training for this on earth was very complex and expensive. How much time and energy do we invest in preparing for our future mission, Joseph Opemba Ekhuya from Kenya asks in his Spotlight article.
The Chief Apostle has directed our focus to our future mission this year. As clearly stated in Revelations 20: 6, our mission has two parts, namely: “But they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years.” The first part involves serving the benefits of Christ’s crucifixion so that all human beings can share in the merit earned by Christ. That is the message of the cross, the gospel. The second part is the same as the first part, but the difference is in the atmosphere of operation. For in the presence of Christ, the king of peace, the message of the cross is delivered without any hindrance. Satan and his agents will have been bound and the powers opposed to God will have been deprived of all their power (Q&A 573).
Because this is a future mission for which we do not have much information, we have to do a lot of preparation. This preparation involves learning as much as possible about our mission, the mission field, and the character of those who will be involved in the mission.
In school I read about the men who first landed on the moon. They had spent several years studying about the moon and the character of the lunar atmosphere. They found out that the force of gravity on the lunar surface is nearly zero. That meant that if they were to land on the moon and to conduct a mission, they would have to be prepared to function in a near-zero-gravity environment. The preparation involved simulating a similar environment here on earth, experiencing near zero gravity. They had to learn how to cope in such an environment. They also needed the favour and blessing of their government because such a mission is very expensive. Their hours of preparation were rewarded when they landed on the moon in 1969. Their two-part mission involved collecting rock samples for further experiments and reigning on the moon. Reigning here means operating without any hindrances or restrictions as experienced here on earth.
Our question for 2023 is therefore: How much time and energy are we investing in the preparation for our future mission?