I was eight years old on April 4, 1968 in Chattanooga, Tennessee when my mom told me to run tell my dad that Dr. King had been shot in Memphis. I remember thinking, “Why would anyone shoot a doctor?” We all watched the news that night and I realized something very tragic had happened in our state. Two months later a Palestinian immigrant named Sirhan Sirhan shot and killed Bobby Kennedy in Los Angeles. The whole country seemed to be falling apart that year as the war in Vietnam raged and racial hatred spewed. The Democratic Convention produced even more fireworks late in August as Chicago was rocked with protest and violence. In November, Richard Nixon defeated Hubert Humphrey and George Wallace to become the 37th President of the United States.
With all the chaos of the year, 1968 came to an end with everyone looking up. As Apollo 8 became the first spaceship to orbit the moon, three astronauts prepared to broadcast a message to the largest listening audience in the history of the world. Nearly a billion people tuned in on Christmas Eve as Lunar Module Pilot Bill Anders began with these words: “For all the people on Earth, the crew of Apollo 8 has a message we would like to send you.”
A little over two and a half years earlier, the cover of TIME magazine was filled with a three word question: “IS GOD DEAD?” From their spacecraft beyond the moon, looking at a blue planet called home, Bill Anders, Command Module Pilot Jim Lovell, and Commander Frank Borman read the passage below. I think they answered the question.
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light. And God saw the light and it was good; and God divided the night from the darkness. And God called the light Day; and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. And God said, ‘Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.’ And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament; and it was so. 
And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day. And God said, ‘Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together unto one place, and let dry land appear’; and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering of the waters he called Seas; and God saw that it was good.” Genesis 1:1-10