Tuesday, April 9th, 2024
I’m sitting here waiting for the total solar eclipse and seeking God for what He wants to say in today’s blog. It was sunny when the day started and then some clouds rolled in mid-morning that, so far, haven’t broken up. I’ve been doing lots of praying that God would blow the clouds away so that we can fully experience this once in a lifetime event. Some of my prayers have been to break off the curses of the naysayers who think it’s entertaining to slander our chances of having clear skies.
Well, the clouds never ended up surrendering to the sun. To be honest, it was a little bit disappointing. This is a once in a lifetime event that we didn’t even have to leave our house to see. We have been praying for weeks that the 40% probability of clear skies would mean nothing, and that God would give us lots of sunshine. We even wrote it on our calendar. So why the cloudy skies? Well, that’s just another one of those things we cannot control.
When it started to get a little darker out and we knew it was close to totality I decided to start my phone video and let it roll. We ended up with an 8.5-minute time capsule that shows it getting dark, staying dark for over 3 minutes and then slowly starting to lighten up. Not only that, but we can see the kids playing on the trampoline with their cousins, their aunt and uncle watching the darkening skies and eventually my 2-year-old crying for me because he wasn’t quite sure why he was stuck on a trampoline in the pitch black. You can hear all of our mingling and excitement and the screams of the children. It really is a cool video. Sometimes when things don’t work out exactly like we think they should, God shows us how to adapt and blesses us from a completely different angle. Which was probably the angle He intended all along; we just needed a little course correction. This is what this video is to me.
The other thing I hear God saying is even if we don’t see something magnificent happen, do we still believe in the possibility that it could be? We so wanted to see this eclipse. We had eclipse glasses, a filter for my camera (which I had practiced on for weeks before) and even had family in town to experience it with us. Does the cloud cover mean it didn’t happen? No, we just experienced different effects than we thought we would. So, when we don’t see God working in our lives or moving the things and people that we think He should does that mean he has left us and moved onto other things? No, certainly not. We just might not see the evidence of Him working that we thought we should. It’s just another example that His thoughts are not our thoughts. It may not be easy to believe, but God is always working in ways that place us on the best path at the best time. Even if it isn’t the path we thought, it is always the best path for us.
Final Thoughts…
Lord, help us all to get out of this place of thinking everything has to work out just so in order for us to be happy or feel that we can enjoy life. Help us to continue to surrender to You in such a way that whatever happens in our lives is exactly what You have written about us in our book. And on the days when our view is limited help us to trust that You are still healing the road behind, pioneering the road ahead and preparing the places and people we will meet all along the way. Help us to never eclipse the plans that You have for us.