Faith Inspiration - Solar Eclipse
I just love when God uses His beautiful and amazing creation to teach us something He wants us to know about Him. Just a few days ago we got to witness an event that only happens once every so many years: a total solar eclipse. We got to witness a partial eclipse back in 2017, but that definitely dims in comparison to the total eclipse we just saw.
It is a fantastic phenomenon, and those of us who follow Christ, know that it is all brought about by God’s mighty hand. He is the One that set all of these heavenly bodies into motion, and He is the one who keeps those bodies just exactly where they should be.
We see in the 1st chapter of Genesis the creation account. These heavenly bodies came into existence on the fourth day.
“14 Then God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years;
15 and let them be for lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth”; and it was so.
16 God made the two great lights, the greater light to govern the day, and the lesser light to govern the night; He made the stars also.
17 God placed them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth,
18 and to govern the day and the night, and to separate the light from the darkness; and God saw that it was good.
19 There was evening and there was morning, a fourth day.”
We see here God made the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night. It is interesting to mull over, now that we know more through telescopes and men going into space, that the moon does not generate its own light, but is a body that reflects the light of the sun. The sun, the greater light that rules over the day, does not just give us light, but it does so much to give our planet life. Along with the moon, the rotation of the earth on its axis, and the revolution of our solar system around it, the sun provides the basis for the water cycles, the ebbs and flows of the oceans, and the regenerative cycle of oxygen and carbon dioxide. Plants would not grow without the warming light of this immense celestial star; for that matter all life would cease to exist without it.
So why did God give us this greater light to rule the day, and this lesser light to rule the night? “…to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years…He placed them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, and to govern the day and the night, and to separate the light from the darkness…” All of this He did for our benefit.
Image by Patou Ricard from Pixabay
Seeing the solar eclipse was an inspiration to how wonderful our God is, and how He established this place to be our home. It’s not a place of drab shadows and dim understanding, but a planet alive with His creative power and amazing, lavish love. He made all of this, even the moon passing in front of the sun so that we might remember what a beautiful, enchanted Being breathed life into this dust, and how very fortunate we are that even when darkness entered the world in the form of sin, He had a plan. He made a way. This leads to my second thought.
You know I have written about light and darkness on various occasions. See Light Beyond the Darkness, When Darkness Comes - Part 1: The Light, When Darkness Comes - Part 2: The Dark. There are several more parts to that series, which you can find on my Faith page under June and July of 2021. Darkness and light have always fascinated me. Though, I love winter, I need my sunshine. Being a Seasonal Affective Disorder sufferer, the shorter, gray days of winter are a detriment to my mental, emotional and physical well being.
When the eclipse moved into full totality, I couldn’t help but imaginine what the world would be like in permanent dusk; never to feel the heat of the sun, or to know the glory of it shining full bore in a pristine blue sky. It would be horrible. As we know from that first chapter in Genesis God gave us the sun for our benefit. We would not last long without its beautiful light.
However, there was something even more telling that began to illuminate my spiritual mind. At the point the moon fully covered the sun we were able to remove our eclipse glasses and look at it. It was awe inspiring to know all at once this would not happen again for a very long time, at least in our area, and to realize how apropos this celestial phenomenon was in reminding us that the light of Christ cannot be dimmed.
We can be in the throes of darkness, being beaten down on every side, but Christ in us shines like that sun as it glowed fiercely all around that orb until it began to pass and the light burst forth exploding onto the landscape below chasing the darkness back into the deep corners. This is who our Savior is in our lives, if we let Him be. He is the Son, the bright light of salvation, deliverer from the kingdom of darkness to the Kingdom of Light.
“13 For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son,
14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”
I hope that you are inspired by this post, but even more so I hope you are daily inspired by God’s amazing creation, and His steadfast love.
Have a great weekend!