Making Us Think

I got up and around this morning, as I usually do when we have the girls, at about 5:45am. The girls start stirring about that time and it’s good to have someone out to help with things. Monday morning, though, I stepped outside and observed for a minute or two a phenomenon in the pre-dawn skies. The moon’s light was being eclipsed by the earth as it passed between the sun and the moon. It happened to be just a few minutes past the totality of the eclipse, and the moon was about 95% dark.
To be sure, as with most eclipses, even the dark portion was lit slightly due to reflected light. But the sight of the moon as a dark, reddish-orange orb was just a little disconcerting even if the scientific explanation was well-known to me.
We’re in luck here in America. The moon will eclipse next in February of next year (2008) and will do so in the evening just a couple hours after sunset. That will make for a prime viewing by many over the parts of the earth that will be able to observe it.
The sun, however, will not totally eclipse in this part of the world until 2017. Then, it’s expected to eclipse beginning in the Northwest part of the nation, and the path of totality will travel to the East Southeast right over Kansas and on down to the Southeast part of the United States. Surely, something to look forward to.
By now, we know the mechanisms by which these things happen. They are not a manifestation of some god’s wrath or anything magical or mysterious. They are, however, part of the creation and were obviously planned by the Creator.
Sometimes, it’s good to look at the eclipsed moon and understand that there are things that humans cannot control and that are bigger than we. Events such as an eclipse make us aware of our frailty and inability to provide even the basic necessities for ourselves. We are not as powerful and self-sufficient as we may think; and maybe that’s why the Creator chose to have the creation go through an eclipse once in a while…to help us understand that “God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse (Rom. 1:20).”