Tragedy and testimony. (Insider Report).

"Delight thyself also in the Lord, and He shall give thee the desires of thy heart" (Psalm 37:4). Rick Husband, commander of the final mission of the Space Shuttle Columbia, cited this passage in a remarkable interview last fall at Grace Community Church in Houston.

"If I ended up at the end of my life having been an astronaut but having sacrificed my family along the way, or living my life in a way that didn't glorify God, then I would look back on it with great regret, and having become an astronaut would not really have mattered all that much," observed commander Husband. "I finally came to realize that what really meant the most to me was to try and live my life the way God wanted me to and to try and be a good husband to Evelyn and to be a good father to my children." Most importantly, he explained, he would teach his family to "know who Jesus was and [give them] an opportunity to make a choice for Jesus."

Payload commander Michael Anderson, Husband's colleague on the doomed shuttle flight, worshiped alongside his commander at Grace Community Church. "Rick and I both know we were put on this shuttle together for a reason, and we've tried to meet all [our] challenges with prayer, and God's been very good in answering our prayers," Anderson explained in his own pre-flight interview. Asking for the congregation's prayers for the shuttle mission's success, Anderson also requested that they pray that the mission would "let God's message get out there.... I'm asking you to pray for us that, above and beyond the purpose of the mission, God will use our faith, our belief, our testimony for Him in ways that we don't know."