Victor J. Glover, a 46-year-old NASA astronaut, recently told Christianity Today that he encourages fellow believers to pray for his upcoming mission to circle the moon.
Selected Monday alongside three other astronauts for the Artemis 2 takeoff next year, Glover stressed that he would strive to make, "thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."
He said: "I know that God can use us for his purposes. When Jesus was teaching the disciples to pray, he used that very specific prayer that we all know, 'Our father who art in heaven ...' So, listen, I am a messenger of his kingdom — his will be done."
Glover, an Iraq veteran and former Navy pilot, is set to join Reid Wiseman, Jeremy Hansen, and Christina Koch as the first Americans to set foot on the moon in more than 50 years.
He will also likely be the first Black man to travel to the moon, with his mission partner Koch seeking to become the first woman near the Earth's natural satellite.
"I very intentionally put God at the front, in the very first comment, and at the end," Glover shared, stressing that he does not want to make the takeoff "divisive" around his skin color.
When not in space, Glover is a devoted attendee of a Church of Christ congregation, occasionally teaching Sunday school. He prepackaged Communion cups and a Bible while preparing for the SpaceX Crew Dragon launch in 2020.
"Pray for our crew," he pleaded. "Pray for the hardware. Pray for the team all around the world that support this. And the hardest mission of all is the one our families are about to embark on. If you could pray for our families, that would be amazing."
Artemis 2 is scheduled to make a 200,000-mile loop around the moon, around 4,600 miles to the far side before gravity pulls the astronauts back toward Earth for the return journey.
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