If you haven’t heard something about the upcoming solar eclipse, you must have been living on the dark side of the moon, or in this case, is it the bright side of the moon…I’m confused? Most of us are prepared that this Monday, August 21, 2017, the sky over the United States will turn dark. The moon is going to pass between the earth and the sun. Depending on where you are, the phenomenon will last about two minutes or so. It’s not the first time this has happened, as people have recorded instances for thousands of years. And it’s not the last time, Lord willing, that it will occur, as scientists calculate that another solar eclipse will rotate over the U.S. in 2024. (See http://www.nasa.gov for detailed information.)

It is a strange, but momentous, event, the kind of thing that sticks with us. I remember the one in 1970 the best. Perhaps because we all put cardboard boxes over our heads, a method of forming some kind of projection. (I had not idea what I was doing!) I followed the instructions, but all I could think about was how foolish we must all look to the aliens who were orchestrating the eclipse. Of course, the 1970 eclipse was immortalized forever, thanks to Carly Simon’s hit, “You’re So Vain.”

The whole thing is rather ironic…people are so excited to see what they can’t look at. That, in fact, is the focus of much of the eclipse conversation: DO NOT LOOK AT IT! Therein lies the mystery of the eclipse. The earth, moon, and sun only align over our spot on earth once in a blue moon. (I have no idea what that idiom means either, but that’s for another day.) When the earth, moon, and sun all come together, we cannot even look at it.

History reveals that Ancient China interpreted the eclipse with fear, for they thought that a dragon had eaten the sun.  Later, about 500 years before Christ, the Babylonian astronomers developed skills to predict future eclipses. By the time Christ walked on earth, eclipses were more fascinating because people could anticipate them than because they bore some angry message from the gods.

Even today, with our massive telescopes and our eclipse-certified glasses, the emphasis of the eclipse remains: we cannot look at it without irreparable damage to our eyesight. It is God’s moment of mystery.  Just as Scripture warns against looking directly at God (Exodus 33:20; John 1:18), the eclipse will remain for me a supernatural moment, captured only in the unlimited eyes of the Creator.

When the eclipse occurs, I will not try to see anything through the lenses of special glasses. Nor will I be wearing a cardboard box over my head.  I will not drive hundreds of miles as others will, just to be more centrally located in the eclipse’s path. Nor will I watch television’s live coverage of the event. Instead, I will be simply sitting in the darkness that God has created, soaking in His mystery. We humans think we have it all figured out, with explanations and algorithms for everything. Not this time. At least, not for these two minutes.  This is God’s moment. We need more divine mystery in our lives.

• Uncategorized