Yesterday, I stood in daytime dark and saw the light.
Like over two hundred million other people across North America, I had the amazing opportunity to see one of nature’s rarest phenomena—a total solar eclipse. In fact, my home in Arkansas lay squarely in the path of totality. Having witnessed two partial eclipses but never a total eclipse, I was beyond excited to see this once-in-a-lifetime spectacle.
And being an amateur astronomy nerd, I knew all the science, of course. I knew that a solar eclipse is caused by the moon passing directly in front of the sun, blocking its light for the time it takes the moon’s 200-mile-wide shadow to pass (which it does at a jaw-dropping speed of 1,724 miles per hour). I was even well-studied on the variety of phenomena I could expect to see: from shadow bands as the eclipse approached, to the sun’s corona during totality, to even solar prominences caused by the sun’s magnetic field looping from behind the moon’s shadow.
But everything I knew couldn’t begin to prepare me for everything I experienced.
It started with the day simply dimming. The sunlight dwindled weak and watery, and the sky deepened to a more serious blue. As the time drew near, I stood with my parents on a spring-greening hilltop behind our home, watching the world I thought I knew be transformed by the solar spell. Faster and faster the light leaked away as a heaviness of navy blue soaked across the sky from the southwest. The air changed, a subtle nerve-tingling shift, and the sudden stillness of a held breath dropped over the earth. And for just a moment, the light above the ground rippled in the ephemeral shimmer of shadow waves.
I was already breathless, the great sweeping shadow of the moon prickling over my skin, but we were still waiting. Through our eclipse glasses, the sun narrowed to an orange comma and then a dot, and then it vanished. And as I removed my glasses, the full glory of the event burst upon me like a doorway to another world. The horizons on every side flared in a sudden circular sunset. The dark draped itself so utterly that down the hill, our outdoor lights flicked on. And the sun’s corona glowed pulsing pink, punctuated by the fierce glitter of the last pricks of light peering through craters on the moon—the diamond ring, they call it, like God’s vow to His bride.
I’m a writer—a worker of words—yet even I can’t describe the three minutes of dreamlike totality, standing in the daytime dark with the sun merely a memory and the moon rushing overhead. All I know is that I cried, that I raised arms to Heaven, that I stood with both a breathless wonder and a joy fierce enough to taste. I knew that the unseen Spirit was moving, pulling His planets in harmony and me with them, and I knew what great gratitude it is for me to spend my life chasing His lines of light.
And then the dark was moving, and the light was coming, and in less time than I could tell it, the day was rushing back in. But for the rest of the afternoon, I went about in a sort of disorienting wonder, dizzy with the aftereffects of the glory and watching the normal cheerful sunshine with a wary disbelief. No longer could I be fooled by the seeming ordinariness of everything. I’d seen what lay beneath. And through it all, I kept soaking in that beautiful knowing—that out of all the spirits of this world clamoring for worship, all the names uttered in power in the heavenlies, it is the only Name Who is worthy, the only One Who spins the sun and stars and positions the planets and flings His spectacular display across the sky, Who chooses me. And as I pondered this truth, it was the words of Colossians 1 that whispered in my mind. “And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.”
Before all things. What does that mean? That Christ is preeminent—above all else. Paul, the author of Colossians, describes Him in these verses with words like head and beginning and firstborn. In other words, He alone holds the keys of the universe, and He is the ruler to Whom everything must bow. But He is not a tyrant, crushing the creation He controls. Instead, He is the loving Savior Who graciously keeps every aspect of creation in its proper motion.
Pause and think about that for a moment. If Christ holds all things together, then that means that right now, as we speak, the reality of all things is completely dependent on Him. Everything from the spin of the smallest subatomic particle to the rotation of the galaxies a billion miles deeper in space is in His hands. Because of Him, plants turn to the light and gravity pulls us downward and butterflies emerge from cocoons and water freezes at thirty-two degrees. Because of Him, the sun and moon are exactly positioned to not only create such breathtaking displays but to allow life to exist on earth at all. Because of Him, the sun sets each night and rises each morning and the stars never scramble in the sky. Because of Him, the biochemical processes in our bodies that we take for granted continue quietly sustaining our lives.
And, Paul tells us, Jesus’ dominion doesn’t stop with the physical. Instead, “By Him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him” (verse 16). The word thrones here refers not to earthly governments but to spiritual ones, to the high forces that govern the spiritual realm. Even the dark spirits under Satan’s control aren’t outside Jesus’ command, as He proved time and again during His earthly ministry. Because of Him, the ranks and hierarchies of heavenly beings order themselves. Because of Him, we have victory in every eternal sense. And because of Him, our souls are held safe for eternity in a light that cannot be shaken.
So, everything in the spiritual and physical worlds depends on Jesus. You might say Jesus is the center of gravity around which all reality in every plane of being orbits. You might say He is the oxygen which all creation breathes. You might say He is the Everything that keeps there from being Nothing. You might say He is the spring from which everything else flows downstream. But however we describe Jesus, He is preeminent. No wonder Paul reminds us in Philippians that “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord” (2:10-11a).
And because Jesus is preeminent, He is powerful. So often when we think of Jesus, we picture Him in His human form—the Man Who joked with His friends and touched the sick and went fishing and told stories. And all of that is true. But turn the page, and we see another picture of Jesus: “His eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the roar of many waters” (Revelation 1:14b-15). So intense is the power of Jesus in this picture that even the Apostle John, Jesus’ best friend, falls to the ground in terror at seeing Him so glorified. This is the power that can command the heavenly bodies, that can darken the face of a 864,000-mile-wide star like our sun with barely a flick of His finger. And even more amazing, this is the power by which, according to Paul, we prevail “with all his energy that he powerfully works within [us]” (Colossians 1:29b).
But as I was lost in the awe of the eclipse, I realized there was more to see than admiration of our Savior just on that grand scale. Yes, Jesus is preeminent and powerful. But more than that, He’s very personal.
Don’t zoom out so far that you lose yourself in the frame. Yes, see Jesus as the cosmic King, the divine Ruler, the risen Firstborn over all creation. But also remember that He is the Shepherd Who never loses a sheep, the Father rushing to welcome the prodigal son, the Friend breaking bread in nail-pierced hands. If Jesus controls the movements of the heavenly bodies, then how much more does He control the movement of our hearts and the events of our lives!
I’m reminded of Madeleine L’Engle, one of my favorite authors of all time. In her book An Acceptable Time, L’Engle introduces the fantastical concept of lines between stars. God draws lines and creates patterns thereby, she insists throughout the events of the book, as her time-traveling characters stumble three thousand years into the past. And as the story continues to unfold, with characters and time periods and events colliding in unpredictable ways, she continuously refers to “the pattern of lines drawn between the stars, between people, between places, between circles [of time].” God, according to L’Engle’s view, does not hopscotch about randomly. Instead, He works with the steadiness of a master architect, drawing lines that ultimately create the beautiful pattern of our lives.
I’ll confess: it’s painfully, pathetically easy for me to feel forgotten by God. I often think I’ve been neglected in a season of life that’s dragged on too long, or abandoned in a plan I didn’t want, or left staring at the dry bones of a broken dream. And in such times, I begin to wonder: can Jesus redeem even this? In my head, I believe He is all-powerful. But through my fears and doubts, I proclaim Him to be just the opposite. I begin to act as if I believe He is weak and anemic and forgetful—and as if it’s up to me and me alone to save myself.
But the eclipse reminded me all over again of what I know so deeply yet forget so readily—Jesus is personal. He doesn’t just spin the stars—He knows them by name. He doesn’t just hide the sun—He set it on its course. And He didn’t just drop me in a random life—He planned my days “when as yet there was none of them” (Psalm 139:16b). He placed me perfectly on a planet designed for life, in the coordinate of time and space designed for me. And with the precision of a solar eclipse, He’s been patiently guiding me through all the days of my life—and I know He will do so still.
So yes—I saw the eclipse. But I saw more than that. Standing there in the dark, I saw the God of light. The God Who is preeminent, the God Who is powerful, but most of all, the God Who is personal. I’m so glad that I have the privilege of serving Him. I’m glad that I dwell not in the shadow of the moon, but under the shadow of His wings. And I’m glad that the heavens declare His glory, and that because of His risen love, I am called to shout the same.