It was July 1969 and Buzz Aldrin was standing on the moon. Notwithstanding a deeply unpopular war and a popular culture in meltdown, America had somehow come together, marshaled its enormous potential, and won the space race. We had beaten the Russians at their own game. Half of President Kennedy's historic challenge had been met -- to put a man on the moon. Now it was time to meet the other half -- return him safely to earth. Three days later Columbia splashed down in the Pacific and was recovered by the USS Hornet. But as the three star voyagers stepped from the helicopter, they were immediately whisked away into a travel trailer specially prepared for their...Quarantine! Nobody was allowed near them. Even President Nixon had to talk to them through a thick glass window. Why? Because nobody knew whether or not our guys had come in contact with some unknown lunar virus that might spread contagion to the human race. Germs from an airless, lifeless, joyless place of "magnificent desolation?" Well, nobody knew. So the most famous men in the world were isolated from the world for three weeks, until the all-clear was determined. There were no germs on the moon. We should have known it was exactly the opposite -- the other way around. The contagion is earth-based. Our beautiful planet is infected with a virus more deadly than Covid-19. It's the virus of sin, and nothing we can do will flatten the curve. It takes out everybody. We've been in galactic quarantine here for quite a while now, haven't we? But willingly into this contagion came one from another world, pure and uncontaminated. He made his dwelling in the land of death. He did not distance himself socially, but reached out and touched the contaminated ones, hugging the lepers, placing his hands on the corpses, doing battle with the power of death so that the infected ones might be cured, and live. He became infected, like we are, so that we might become uninfected, like He is. And when our disease finally killed him, and all seemed lost, he rose up from the grave and the universe knew the tide of the epidemic had been turned. Its almost time for quarantine to be lifted! "Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death." -- Hebrews 2:14-15