This week, many of us caught a glimpse - or tried to - of the solar eclipse. For those of us who were around in 1999, it didn't quite have the same level of drama. On Wednesday, the partial eclipse was more subtle. A slight dimming. A sense that something was happening, even if you had to squint to notice it.
The obvious thing about an eclipse is that the sun doesn't go anywhere. It is still there, still burning, still doing everything it has always done - it's just that something has got in the way of our seeing it clearly. You may know the famous words "I believe in the sun, even when it's not shining." These profound words come from an anonymous poem scratched onto a cellar wall in Cologne, Germany, by a Jewish person hiding during World War II. They are a powerful testament of hope and endurance during the Holocaust.
The eclipse, and these words, are a stark reminder that the light hasn't failed. Our view of it has simply changed.
I think there are seasons of life that feel a bit like that. Seasons where God feels distant, or obscured, or simply hard to locate. Where the warmth we once felt seems to have dimmed without us quite knowing why. And in those moments, it can be tempting to conclude that the light has gone out altogether.
But the sun was there all along.
The Psalmist knew this feeling well. They wrote - "How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?" - and yet they kept singing anyway. Faith, perhaps, is less about always seeing clearly and more about trusting what you know to be true even when the view is obscured. Choosing to believe, on the grey days, that the light hasn't gone anywhere. The eclipse passes, as it always does.
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