It's been a long road ...

As today is the season premiere for Star Trek: Enterprise, and I'll confess
I am a trekkie, the theme song and opening credits keep coming to mind:

"It's been a long road, getting from there to here ..."

I found a column that is feels appropriate for today.

http://www.partialobserver.com/Artic...?ArticleID=632, which I
will repost below:

I wish it wasn't taking so long to get to "there".

Jon

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It's Been A Long Road
Tragedies on the Journey to the Future.

by Jonathan Wilson
February 1, 2003

Five men and two women, representing the aspirations of three nations and
most of the civilized world, have perished today while taking the risks that
the future requires. Pondering the tragedy, I recall the opening words to
the theme of Star Trek: Enterprise, "It's been a long road getting from
there to here..."

The long road has perils as well. When seven astronauts die, adding to the
list of fatalities that stretch back to 1986 and 1968, we might ponder the
meaning and purpose of it all. We wonder why God allows mechanical failures.
We wonder if the journey to near space is worth the money and the risk to
life.

Pessimists in my generation--the GenX post-moderns who are now grown-up and
working and teaching at universities, talk about the "myth of progress."
Have these technologies and space travel really made life better?

The answer is, of course, that life is better and progress is not a myth in
the nations that have moved forward. Those who would want to trade the
median American lifestyle for the lifestyle of 1850, with sky-high infant
mortality and average life-expectancy around 45, are crazy.

It is complacency regarding this lifestyle that causes the crisis of meaning
and leads to the conclusion that progress is a myth and a failure. People
who are saturated with materialism tend to be nihilists: It was as true in
ancient Rome as it is today. The problem with complacency and nihilism is
that it leads to risk aversion.

We forget that necessity is the mother of invention; that genius is 90%
perspiration; that suffering is the catalyst to change. Those who have
everything and see reality only in the terms of being born with an
entitlement to comfort, are the ones who conclude that risk and progress are
meaningless.

Despite these pessimists, there are people ready and willing to take the
risks that progress into the future require. The tragedy today cuts deep,
because we value the heroes who move us forward and realize that when they
perish, they die for all of us.

However, their deaths are not meaningless nor in vain. People will continue
to work to improve processes and technologies which will have the effect of
making these tragedies in space even more rare than they already are.

It's a long road, and dangerous. It is also meaningful, even necessary, that
we follow this road where risk is embraced and heroes are both celebrated
and mourned.

Thank you, NASA. Keep it up. My great-great-grandchildren are depending on
you.

About the Author:
Jonathan Wilson is a pastor in an evangelical church in Chicago.