Creation Writer, LLC

I enjoy looking at the moon, but don’t pay strict attention to its cycles, so I was fortunate to hear on the radio that the total lunar eclipse was happening just as I was driving home. I looked over to the eastern sky and there it was—just as the radio announcer said it was! According to the radio report, moon-watchers were already gathered at Seattle’s Green Lake to take in the sight, and that was enough to spark my interest. So I watched.

As I saw it, the total lunar eclipse took place in three distinct stages: darkness overtaking a shiny white moon; a darkened moon; and light overtaking a darkened moon. Upon reflection, I believe I noticed that the darkness overtaking the white moon unfolded as though the darkness were an expanding “bite mark” upon the white moon, expanding from the lower-left of the moon until it reached the upper-right of the moon; if I might say so, it had the look of a dark and expanding bite, and carried a tone of malevolence. Then the darkened moon stage took hold for quite a while. And finally, the whiteness came back, extending from the lower-right of the moon to the upper-left of the moon this time, and this time it was not at all a convexly-arcing bite mark but rather a concave-shaped arc that gave the look of a sweeping white cloth that was wrapping and overwhelming the blackness. On reflection, I couldn’t help but think that this could be a metaphor for the way in which the death of the Lord Jesus, His three-day burial, and His resurrection unfolded—from blackness to light, from evil to good. Could this total lunar eclipse have been a celestial panorama bespeaking the good news of the gospel? And following this vein of thought, one considers that the directionalities of the moving blackness and the moving whiteness were at right angles, effectively forming a cross! Truly God’s eternal power and divine nature are manifested through His created things (Romans 1:20)! Selah.