The Eclipse

It was big news last week, so I suppose I’m a little behind in getting on the band wagon. I usually am these days. When life centers around a 2-year-old and 6-month-old, what’s “in” is nowhere to be seen on the radar. Not that I’m really complaining. I don’t look forward to the day when Emry and Ethan are begging for whatever is the “latest and greatest”.

But back to the subject of last week’s headline news: the solar eclipse. Pittsburgh was on the 85% range of its path and peak time was about 2:30 that afternoon, just a bit after I arrived home from work. As I drove, the world around me did get darker in a way I had never seen before, therefore making it a bit hard to describe. For it wasn’t like dusk. And it definitely wasn’t like passing rain clouds. It was like a curtain being drawn over light, darkening the room but not pitch dark. It was rather amazing.

Even neater was the fact that it was cloudy that day. Of course there was lots of discussion about looking at the sun, viewing glasses, regular sunglasses, scars on the retina, etc. No doubt the same conversation millions of people were having that morning. Since I didn’t have viewing glasses or even regular sunglasses (I guess I could have borrowed Emry’s Minnie glasses…), I went out with the hopes of just getting a peak. Which is nearly impossible unless you have a lot of stubborn willpower to look at direct sunlight – even a small portion of it. I thought I would just have to chalk it down that I was at least alive during this rare natural event and leave it at that…until a group of dark clouds passed over and I could see the eclipse through them – the moon passing between the sun and the earth. It was pretty amazing.

And isn’t it interesting to think that God created the heavenly bodies just so? They cross paths on a schedule, just as they rotate in harmonious precision every moment of every day. No chaos. No slip of a half spin. No falling into nothingness. Every single movement is perfect and planned by a loving Creator. Like I already said twice: Amazing.