Dear Friends,
I trust you’re enjoying this spring weather and rejoicing in the Easter season. Our homily/essay this week is a brief one. Listen or read it or both, whatever suits your fancy!
Prayers abound for our many friends in Israel. May you have a blessed Passover, and (in addition to the “Iron Dome”), may the Lord God, indeed, be your “sun and shield.”
Thanks for sharing the podcast, friends. I’ll be back on Wednesday, May the first!
Every Blessing!
D. Paul
When I Consider Your Heavens…
“When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? (Psalm 8:3-4, NIV).
Such scripture came to mind for may of us us who had the opportunity to see the total solar eclipse. What a show! Here in Indianapolis, Indiana, the day was picture perfect: blue skies, mid-seventies, with an anticipatory rush all over town as families, churches, non-profits gathered, with more than 50,000 assembling at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway to experience this once-in-a-lifetime heavenly display, it having been a century since a total solar eclipse had graced Indiana. From opening to closing, the celestial drama ran around ninety minutes, with total darkness approximately four minutes.
In some ways, it was like watching a play in reverse, the stage instructions reading: “The curtain rises as the lights go dark. All stage and house lights remain dark for four minutes. As the curtain descends, all lights slowly come up.” It was a little spooky, folks, something primordial about the experience, evoking the beginning of time when “The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep (Genesis 1:2, ESV). We had the good fortune of viewing it from an open, upstairs patio with dear friends who had driven up from Kansas City, wisely making a pit stop in St. Louis the night before. There’s something reassuring about witnessing a cosmic event with those you love, reducing unutterable majesty to the simple utterances of, “wow,” “unbelievable,” and “amazing.”
Proverbs tells us that the beginning of knowledge or wisdom is the “fear of the Lord,” and a derivation of that word “fear” is “wonder and awe.” Truly, it was a “wonderfully awesome” display of God’s handiwork, prompting several other scriptures to come to mind.
As the moon slowly blocked the sun from view and it grew darker and colder, I recalled the prophet Isaiah: “See, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the peoples….” (Isaiah 60:2, NIV). And so it appears true today, no? “The power of darkness” (Luke 22:53), which Christ spoke of, can seem omnipresent today. The psalmist would understand well our crazy, topsy-turvy world, having described his own as, “Even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you” (Psalm 139:12, ESV).
But God never leaves his people dangling in the darkness, does he. And neither did He let the sun remain obscured this past April the 8th, for as the moon regressed from the sun and the sun from the moon, a warm, comforting light returned, reminding us that “…the Lord God is a sun and shield” (Psalm 84:11, NIV). What a beautiful thought: God is our sun—a lamp unto our feet, our guide, our good shepherd. And He is our shield—our shade, a refuge, our great protector. As Martin Luther penned it, “A mighty fortress is our God!”—“Dost ask who that may be? Christ Jesus, it is He, Lord Sabaoth His Name!”
We can trust Him, my friends, we can trust Him. Even as the moon cannot blot out the sun, He who called the light into being can never be eclipsed. He who said “I am the light of the world” can never be extinguished. Yes, “…blessed, happy is the one who trusts in the Lord” (Psalms 84:12, NIV, author’s paraphrase).
And of this, my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, you can be certain: “… you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (I Peter 2:9, ESV), and nothing, nothing “…in all creation, will be able to separate you from (that Light)—the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord“ (Romans 8:39, NIV, author’s paraphrase).
Amen!
The Church’s One Foundation is Jesus Christ Her Lord!
Podcast #24: "When I consider your heavens...