So the eclipse happened. I hope it was visible where you live; there was nothing to see but clouds and dusk in my neck of the woods.
And we’re still here, contrary to the predictions of some.
Why is it that a total eclipse of the sun, which happens somewhere around the world at least once a year, only seems to be worthy of apocalyptic prognosis when it happens in North America?
It seems as though the focus is on hype, social media likes, and, well, ourselves.
For some, viewing the eclipse was a once-in-a-lifetime event. I was fortunate; people of around my age have now seen it twice. And it was a remarkable astronomical phenomenon. In seeing the reactions of people on television and social media, the most appropriate word to describe them seems to be awe. And that’s good!
While some Christians used the eclipse as an opportunity to publish their end-times prognostications, others, wisely, used it as an occasion to declare the glory of God – a wiser approach, to be sure. Seeing the moon eclipse the sun fully, plunging part of the world into daytime darkness, might be the one time when it would be acceptable to exclaim, as many did, “Oh my God!”
I’m not sure they all caught the truth in that exclamation, but it’s there: God made this happen, as part of his grand design of the universe.
Of course, there are scientific explanations for it; God created the science that made it happen. But just as beholding the vastness of the ocean or the grandeur of the mountains might take our breath away and cause us to delight in the goodness of God, seeing a solar eclipse can and should do the same.
Let me encourage you to see the goodness and glory of God not only in the big and the rare, but also in the small and the common. For example, my wife and I have had a fun little competition for about the last 25 years to find out which of us first sees a forsythia in bloom in the spring (she won this year; it all started as a way to help me identify flowering bushes, at which I am still less than an amateur). Forsythia bushes are almost as common as dandelions (the same colour, but much more remarkable), but the brilliant yellow flowers bring delight to the eye when we see them. Channel that delight into praise to the One who made them.
Nobody finds an end-times prophecy in a forsythia. But you can pay as much attention to the ordinary as you do to the extraordinary, because in it we see the goodness and grace of the Lord.
“The heavens proclaim the glory of God.
The skies display his craftsmanship” (Psalm 19.1, NLT).
Passionately His 