Craig Brian Larson, in his book Pastoral Grit: the Strength to Stand and to Stay shares an interesting story. He writes:
In 1972, NASA launched the exploratory space probe Pioneer 10. According to Leon Jaroff in Time, the satellite's primary mission was to reach Jupiter, photograph the planet and its moons, and beam data to earth about Jupiter's magnetic field, radiation belts, and atmosphere. Scientists regarded this as a bold plan, for at that time no earth satellite had ever gone beyond Mars, and they feared the asteroid belt would destroy the satellite before it could reach its target. But Pioneer 10 accomplished its mission and much, much more. Swinging past the giant planet in November 1973, Jupiter's immense gravity hurled Pioneer 10 at a higher rate of speed toward the edge of the solar system. At one billion miles from the sun, Pioneer 10 passed Saturn. At some two billion miles, it hurtled past Uranus; Neptune at nearly three billion miles; Pluto at almost four billion miles. By 1997, twenty-five years after its launch, Pioneer 10 was more than six billion miles from the sun.And despite that immense distance, Pioneer 10 continued to beam back radio signals to scientists on Earth. "Perhaps most remarkable," writes Jaroff, "those signals emanate from an 8-watt transmitter, which radiates about as much power as a bedroom night light, and takes more than nine hours to reach Earth.'" The Little Satellite That Could was not qualified to do what it did. Engineers designed Pioneer 10 with a useful life of just three years. But it kept going and going. By simple longevity, its tiny 8-watt transmitter radio accomplished more than anyone thought possible.
Cool story pastor, but what does that have to do with me? I’m glad you asked. You may look around you and feel like people who can do the job much better surround you. You may not feel you have anything to offer. Perhaps you feel like you are too insignificant or too wounded or too weak or too whatever. But did you know that when we offer ourselves to serve the Lord, He can work even through someone with 8-watt abilities? Consider this as well. God can do no work through someone who is always inward looking or who quits.
If you’ve only got 8 watts worth of abilities…fire up all eight watts and watch what God can do! Be willing to be used.
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Note: This is from NASA's site on Pioneer 10:
Pioneer 10 was built by TRW Inc., Redondo Beach, Calif., and
was launched March 2, 1972, on a three-stage Atlas-Centaur rocket. Pioneer 10
reached a speed of 32,400 mph needed for the flight to Jupiter, making it the
fastest human-made object to leave the Earth; fast enough to pass the moon in
11 hours and to cross Mars’ orbit, about 50 million miles away, in just 12
weeks.
On July 15, 1972, Pioneer 10 entered the asteroid belt, a
doughnut-shaped area that measures some 175 million miles wide and 50 million
miles thick. The material in the belt travels at speeds up to 45,000 mph and
ranges in size from dust particles to rock chunks as big as Alaska. Pioneer 10
was the first spacecraft to pass through the asteroid belt, considered a
spectacular achievement, and then headed toward Jupiter. Accelerating to a
speed of 82,000 mph, Pioneer 10 passed by Jupiter on December 3, 1973.
The spacecraft was the first to make direct observations and
obtain close-up images of Jupiter. Pioneer also charted the gas giant’s intense
radiation belts, located the planet’s magnetic field, and established Jupiter
is predominantly a liquid planet. In 1983, Pioneer 10 became the first
human-made object to pass the orbit of Pluto, the most distant planet from the
Sun.
Following its encounter with Jupiter, Pioneer 10 explored
the outer regions of the solar system, studying energetic particles from the
Sun (solar wind), and cosmic rays entering our portion of the Milky Way. The
spacecraft continued to make valuable scientific investigations in the outer
regions of the solar system until its science mission ended March 31, 1997.
Since that time, Pioneer 10’s weak signal has been tracked
by the DSN as part of a new advanced-concept study of communication technology
in support of NASA’s future Interstellar Probe mission. At last contact,
Pioneer 10 was 7.6 billion miles from Earth, or 82 times the nominal distance
between the Sun and the Earth. At that distance, it takes more than 11 hours
and 20 minutes for the radio signal, traveling at the speed of light, to reach
the Earth.
“From Ames Research Center and the Pioneer Project, we send
our thanks to the many people at the Deep Space Network (DSN) and the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), who made it possible to hear the spacecraft signal
for this long,” said Pioneer 10 Flight Director David Lozier.
Pioneer 10 explored Jupiter, traveled twice as far as the
most distant planet in our solar system, and as Earth’s first emissary into
space, is carrying a gold plaque that describes what we look like, where we
are, and the date when the mission began. Pioneer 10 will continue to coast
silently as a ghost ship into interstellar space, heading generally for the red
star Aldebaran, which forms the eye of the constellation Taurus (The Bull).
Aldebaran is about 68 light-years away. It will take Pioneer 10 more than two
million years to reach it. Its sister ship, Pioneer 11, ended its mission
September 30, 1995, when the last transmission from the spacecraft was
received. Information about Pioneer 10 is on the Internet at:
