A Total Eclipse Of Our Heart

Good morning…

In much of Mexico, the U.S. and Canada, the enormity and regularity of God’s rhythms, set in motion before the beginning of time, will be on full display today, April 8th, 2024. Now up in the middle of the night, I prayerfully research and happily discover.

• Wikipedia tells us that “a solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun, briefly obscuring the view of the Sun from a small part of the Earth, totally or partially.” Today, wearing funky glasses to protect our eyes, many of us will be in awe of breathtaking moments of totality.
• Fascinatingly predictable, every fourth repetition (54 years), a total solar eclipse occurs in roughly the same place, something called an exeligmos.
• Today’s phenomenon sits in the center of what has occurred in the past and what will occur in the future. The total solar eclipse of March 7, 1970 was seen in Mexico, the U.S. (Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Massachusetts) and Canada (Nova Scotia and Newfoundland). The total solar eclipse of May 11, 2078 will be seen in Mexico, the U.S. (Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia).
• I explore this new-to-me word, exeligmos, and learn that in Greek it means “turning of the wheel.”

On unique days like today, we visibly notice that our world is not stagnant or stationary. We are constantly moving, shifting, evolving. Through moments of awe-inspiring totality, we are invited to surrender again into the reliable rhythms of the Creator of our universe. We are held in the trustworthy care of the One who gracefully turns the wheel on our world. For we are the product of His hand, heaven’s poetry etched on lives, created in the Anointed, Jesus, to accomplish the good works God arranged long ago (Ephesians 2:10, VOICE).

Dear living Lord, please move through our inner landscape like You move through the sky, eclipsing our hearts with Your transformative power.

…Sue…