August
21, 2017 was one those days that will always be etched in my mind. That was a day when the world stood
completely still for just a couple of minutes in Middle Tennessee. August 21st was a solar eclipse
that passed through the area. At the
peak of the eclipse, I stood there listening to complete silence. All the dogs in the yard, the chickens around
house and the people watching all had a common thread, they were completely
still and quiet. The outside temperature
dropped drastically during that period of time.
All of the automatic lights came on to light the darkness. And for just a brief moment in time the sun
had disappeared from the world. The
solar eclipse was in full effect in my life.
An
eclipse doesn’t only happen to the Earth, it can also happen to Christians on a
spiritual level. We walk in the light
and feel the warmth of Jesus shinning all around us. We go through life without even thinking
about the possibilities that Jesus will not be shinning down on us. And gradually the Son starts getting blocked
out and we start to lose the Light. But
we continue to carry on with our life as if nothing is happening around
us. We are too consumed by the things we
have to accomplish to realize that our world is getting darker.
Finally,
the Son is gone from our view and the darkness has taken over our lives. Everything gets very still and quiet. We no longer have the desire to keep moving
forward. We are frozen in place. The warmth from the Son has vanished and we
are left in the cold. We start to look
for light from any place. We turn to
man made lights to replace the Light of the World and go off in the direction of
those lights just to feel normal again. We
try to feel the void in our lives with anything that might give us temporary
happiness.
The
solar eclipse only lasts for a short period of time. Middle Tennessee averaged two minutes of
total eclipse. A spiritual eclipse
doesn’t have a time table. We can be
without seeing the Son for a short period or it could last years. We never know how long it will take
for the Son to reemerge in our lives.
And when the sun starts to reappear from behind the moon, it makes a
beautiful picture of a diamond ring. That
same picture describes the Son as He is allowed back into our lives. Our soul is presented with the diamond ring
and the promise that He was always there waiting on us to emerge from the
darkness and back into the warmth of his Light.
It has
taken me several months to realize that I was walking in the dark. My personal eclipse started over the summer
of 2017. I watched as my father-in law
was being weakened by cancer. His body
was not responding to the treatments or the medicines and he was growing weaker
by the hour. Finally on August 11 God
called him home. I didn’t only lose my
father-in law but I also lost a very dear friend. The height of my eclipse happened in December
of 2017. It started out on the first day
of December when my grandfather’s body finally grew too weak to carry on. He was one of my mentors and one of the
people that I looked to for help in many areas.
The darkness continued as Christmas came and the realization set in that
two of the people I loved dearly would no longer be with us. My soul was in a cold state and my life was
filled with man made light. I would sit
in the church pews but my mind was everywhere else. The spiritual eclipse was in full effect in
my life.
Thank
you Jesus for always being there when I was in the darkness. You are the Light of the World and as You
reemerged from the darkness, I saw the diamond and received Your promise that
You will always be there when I’m in midst of the darkness. Lord I pray for anyone that is going through
a spiritual eclipse. I pray that they
remember the promise that You are always there and that they find the Son
light. Amen
