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Total Eclipse

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August 21, 2017 was an event that threw me straight into the Twilight Zone. Actually, it was 1:32 PM and it was the most amazing 2 minutes and 19 seconds of my life!                                                                                

The excitement started slow and grew to an overwhelming spectacle! We watched on tv as reporter after reporter tried to give a first hand account while emotionally awed. It started in Salem, Oregon and traveled all the way to Charleston, South Carolina. The greatest sky event of our lifetime. 

We were in Duck Town, Tennessee and went to see the eclipse of the sun in full totality. Stephen and I loaded the car up with supplies including extra cans of gas. We fought the traffic all the way to Tennessee. Kathryn and several of her friends loaded up their car and we all headed on our way. 

The anticipation was so thick you could cut it with a knife. Everything was slow to happen. We had on our crazy glasses. Soon all the shadows all turned to crescents like little moons or like little palm leaves.  Then sun started to disappear and all of a sudden BAM! The Sun was gone!!! Where the sun once was, now was a big black hole in the sky. The birds stopped singing and the crickets started chirping. Jupiter and Venus were visible in the sky!  It got cold as the sun was completely blocked. Then, the greatest astronomical thing in the world happened, the Diamond Ring effect!  The rays of the sun popped out from the top of the black hole in the sky. Oh my word it was amazing! I can not think of anything more spectacular. 

At that moment I was reminded of the power of God unlike any time in my life. I worshipped our Creator for his awesomeness and power. I felt as if God was looking out of the heavens at me. I’ve got to admit — it was a little spooky, but amazing.

Can you just think what the American Indians and other indigenous peoples from long ago thought?  The sun disappearing and then an eye appears! They had to be terrified.  

But the Bible says there is something much more spectacular that happens every day. 

  Read Revelation 4.  (I know it is long).

John tries to explain the glory of God and the splendor of heaven. First, note that there were some crazy looking creatures up there.  Beings with wings that were covered with eyes that flew all over the place. God was there. If you want to be blown away, make a list of what John saw. But the most amazing thing he saw was God and he couldn’t explain it.

Think of a time when you truly worshipped God. What was it like? Write on the back where you were and how it felt.  How could you experience God like this all the time? What do you think stands in your way of truly worshipping? 

We should strive every day to have that awesome experience with the Creator.  He waits patiently for us as we play on our phones, watch the news, go off to work, come home, cook dinner or go to the ball field, watch tv and go to bed, having never touched our Bibles. It is a simple thing for us to do. It is a simple thing to have a close relationship with the GOD WHO LOVES US.  Yet we put Him on a shelf and accept a lukewarm relationship with Him.

Let’s make every day a “TOTAL ECLIPSE” moment with God. 

Pastor Greg

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FOCUSED

One of the casualties of aging to which I find myself a victim is the dimming of the eyes.  Ecclesiastes 12 counsels the young person to remember God, their Creator, in their youth before the aging process takes over and various faculties, as listed in verses 1-7, are diminished.

Clear eyesight when we are young may be something we take for granted. However, as we age the realization that our vision is not as sharp as it once was takes hold. “Readers” become standard fare for all intricate tasks. Our once keen laser sharp focus is now blurry and in need of help to restore its youthfulness. That restoration is found through glasses or some sort of rejuvenating surgery. Especially in the early stages of this degenerative eye problem we may be able to fake it and get by, but eventually we must relent and do something to correct the problem.

There is a parallel between physical and spiritual vision. “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus” was written in the early 20th century. The hymn writer, Helen Lemmel, was strongly influenced by the artist and later little-known missionary, Lilias Trotter. Miss Trotter started off as an aspiring artist but early on felt a call from God to reach the lost. She began her ministry by rescuing prostitutes from the streets of London. Later she went to Africa, without missionary funding, and served for over forty years. While there she penned a poem that would greatly influence the writing of the hymn “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus.”  The poem was entitled “Focused: A Story and Song.” 

The poem centers around focusing one’s attentions fully and completely upon God. She writes that Satan knows that if a person uses all their powers of concentration on being led by God’s Spirit, they will have a great intensity and impact upon those to whom they are called to minister. Lilias Trotter, writing in a more formal use of the English language than we are accustomed, shares some timeless insights which could very easily have been written today but with a different accent. She writes: “Never has it been so easy to live in half a dozen good harmless worlds at once—art, music, social science, games, motoring, the following of some profession, and so on. And between them we run the risk of drifting about, the ‘good’ hiding the ‘best’ even more effectually than it could be hidden downright frivolity with its smothered heartache at its own emptiness.”

The “good” hiding the “best” leads us to emptiness.  Could this be true of us today especially as American Christians? Have we sought the “good” while missing the “best”? The chorus of the hymn, which we will be singing in worship this Sunday, says it best.

                Turn your eyes upon Jesus, Look full in His wonderful face,                                                                                                                                        And the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace.

Keith Pate

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