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Meditating upon the birth of Jesus and upon the Three Kings’ long journey following yonder star, I was put in mind of a certain starry night when I was eight years old and living with my family in Japan. That was in early October, 1957, a few days after the Soviet Union placed Sputnik 1 into orbit around the earth. On the U.S. Army post on which we lived, word went out that conditions should be good on a certain evening, at a certain hour, from a certain schoolyard on the post, for viewing the first artificial Earth satellite as it moved across the heavens.
This is what I remember: The night was cloudless and fairly warm. Sunset was not long behind us, but the eastern sky was inky dark. Numerous troops and families gathered in the schoolyard. A boy named Demetrius, close to my own age, was there with his family. I don’t know how I was acquainted with him, but every time I have ever thought of Sputnik, I have also thought of Demetrius. It is the only time I think of him. After one person spotted the satellite overhead, a murmur went through the crowd, and people began to help one another locate the single speck of light moving in the expanse of sky.
Did we watch the spacecraft until it dimmed and disappeared? Did we, after a while, tire of it and turn away? Did we wonder when it might come into view again? I do not know. There is so very much that I do not know of things I have witnessed and things of which I have only heard or read. I am mostly okay with that, the slow erosion of my certainties. It’s why I am glad we have the Four Gospels, and not just one inerrant, definitive report of miraculous events.
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