Back in 1962 a company built an antenna in Andover, Maine and they named it Telstar. The antenna at Andover was a giant horn constructed of aluminum and steel. It measured 180feet long, 95 feet high and weighed 380 tons and was built with the ‘accuracy of a fine watch’. (This was when watches were all mechanical devices!) The antenna was so big that its thin inflated cover of fabric and synthetic measured 161 feet high and 210feet across. This fabric was kept inflated by a positive air pressure. This was called a ‘radome’, and at the time was the largest air inflated structure in the world. If laid flat on the ground the dome would cover 3 acres. People and trucks entered through air lock doors to prevent deflation. The antenna was constructed inside the inflated dome. A 70-foot ring gear allowed the antenna to move vertically and an inner ring on the floor of the dome allowed the antenna to move horizontally about the center point.

I had a great aunt who married a Know-it-all. He basically had an answer for EVERYTHING. He once told a story to some of my adult relatives, which stated that the he had worked at the Telstar facility and knew all about it. He claimed that it had a tendency to “ice up” on the inside, in the cold, Maine, winter months. He claimed that it got so bad that large icicles would form on the inside of the dome and hang down. This created a danger to the equipment and the employees, should any of those icicles break loose and fall. They could impale a person and destroy the antenna. He claimed that the way they had devised for removing those icicles from the inflated fabric, 95 feet high, was to use a 12 gauge shotgun and shoot them off! Yep, you heard it right. Reread it if you need to. It’s really what he said. Shoot them off and never pierce the fabric.

Interestingly, being a know-it-all doesn’t actually require anyone to truly know all. It only requires the ability to maintain the illusion that one knows all. This trait can quickly become annoying and even more quickly cause the know-it-all to begin to “guess” at more and more of their “facts.”

This annoying characteristic can be slipped into and out of by the best of us. We need to avoid this whenever possible in areas of faith. We can be bearers of God’s love and grace, even if we cannot answer every question about God. We can never know all things about the eternal God, but we can know His love and share that in honesty.

Perhaps our goal should be to become less of a Godly know-it-all and more of a Godly Love-it-all. Blessings!

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