Encountering God

Yesterday, the United States experienced a beautiful natural phenomenon: a total solar eclipse. Millions gathered in their yards, in public parks, beaches, lakes, and other places outdoors, to look through solar-filtered lenses on  glasses and telescopes, towards the sky. I myself watched from the top of a parking garage here at a local school where there were powerful telescopes capturing this awe-striking event. Tallahassee experienced about 87% totality. It was cloudy, too, so we did not experience a true total solar eclipse, but what I saw still took my breath away.

On top of the deck at Tallahassee Community College, the excitement began to rush through my veins as I waited in line for my solar glasses. I finally got up to the front, put them on, looked up, and was amazed at what I saw. I quickly got in another line, as the clouds rolled by, to look at the sun and moon collide through a telescope. In the line, a fellow observer and I struck up a conversation, and they said to me "We needed a day like today." I looked through the telescope as the words echoed through my eardrums.

They were absolutely right. Let's be honest, life in the U.S. has been difficult lately. We endured a heated election season, and have been divided politically as sharply as I have ever experienced (I'm only 29, but I venture to guess even others would agree with me). Even in my own Christian denomination, the United Methodist Church, we are divided along issues of human sexuality, among other things. I needed a day like yesterday. A day in which nearly every American was unified in their curiosity, their amazement, their wonder, of something bigger than themselves, bigger than the things that divide us.


A total solar eclipse is a very scientific thing that happens. The sun, moon, and earth form a perfect line for this to occur. Think of the detail. Think of the perfection. This is a rare occurrence, in part, because, related to the earth's orbit around the sun, the moon's is titled. Everything must be aligned for this to happen, and it is rare. On top of that, only a portion of the inhabitants of earth get to see this event, since the moon's shadow does not cover the whole earth. And it happened for us. We needed a day like yesterday. Not to prove of some blessing, but to remind us that we are small, that we are part of something greater, and that there is far more that we have in common as a people that we let on.

I think the U.S. had a collective encounter with God yesterday. Whether you knew it or not, God showed you something yesterday. What it is for you, personally, I don't know. To look up and the sun and moon colliding in some perfect unity with earth, had to make you feel something, to experience something, to wonder...

God of the heavens and of earth,
of sun, and moon, and sky,
You have created all that we can see,
and all that we cannot see.
We gathered in common awe and amazement
to experience something beautiful, something
quite wonderful.
As millions looked skyward, we were reminded
of just how amazing you are.
May yesterday's blessing fill us today
May your love be like an eclipse in our
very heart and soul.
We may not be able to fully explain it,
but we know it, feel it, and are changed by it.
May your grace and mercy fill us once again,
bringing all together in perfect unity.
In your Son Jesus' name we pray, Amen.

         

Photos from across the U.S. and from the ISS of the eclipse yesterday, August 21st, 2017.