Pineridge Blog

I know this is not a great picture of the recent lunar eclipse, but it is one I shot on my iPhone while watching it from 

my front yard at 11:37 pm on Sunday night.

It is eerie to see the bright full moon turn to “blood” as the shadow of the earth completely eclipses the light of the sun from the lunar surface. In the dim light the moon has a red cast and it becomes the “Blood Moon.”  In ancient times where life was more coordinated with the phases of the moon, a Blood Moon would certainly seem ominous. Even in Joel’s prophecy in the Hebrew scripture he writes, “The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes.”

This is repeated in the New Testament foretelling of the apocalypse, even by Jesus.

Is it a sign of the apocalypse? I hope so. The common use of “apocalyptic” is shorthand for something indescribably bad: a war scape; the destruction wrought by a hurricane, tornado, or wildfire. You get the idea, but this use of the word is incomplete at best.

Apocalypse simply means, “unveiling.” The use of it in the Bible is not a foretelling of destruction, but of the presence of God.

Standing in my yard gazing up at the moon as it turned to blood, I thought about how amazing it is. Just think, the earth and the moon hurtling through space, each traveling in their orbits at thousands of miles an hour, sometimes align perfectly with the sun so that the shadow of the earth is exactly the right size to block light from the sun on the moon. Conversely the moon is exactly the right size so that when it passes between the sun and the earth there is a spectacular solar eclipse.  Who would think of such a thing?

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
    the moon and the stars that you have established;
what are humans that you are mindful of them,
    mortalsthat you care for them?

Yet you have made them a little lower than God
    and crowned them with glory and honor. 

(Psalm 8:3-5)

God made the great lights.
   God’s faithful love will last forever.
 God made the sun to rule the day.
    God’s faithful love will last forever.
God made the moon and stars to rule the night.
    God’s faithful love will last forever.

(Psalm 137:7-9)