I was rudely awakened this morning at 5:30 am by a strange bright light coming into our bedroom window. My first thought was that we were either about to be hit by a runaway train, or aliens were invading us. It was the logic of my semi-dream state. Finally awake, I got up to see who was shining a spot light into my eyes and ruining my sleep. To my surprise I saw the moon. I don’t think I’ve ever been awakened by the brightness of the moon. I wanted to wake Sue up to show her, but I didn’t want to get punched in the nose in her semi-dream state. So I enjoyed the sight on my own.
I found out that this bright moon actually had a name. It’s called a supermoon. What I discovered later was that this full moon was a supper blue blood moon and the last time a blood moon, a blue moon and a supermoon happened at the same time was 152 years ago (one can learn a lot from Google at 5:30 in the morning). A "supermoon" happens when a full moon appears at the precise moment the moon’s orbit is closest to the Earth. This makes the moon larger and brighter by 14%, according to NASA (thus my totally “reasonable” error in mistaking it for a train). Blue moons refer to the appearance of a second full moon in one calendar month and are quite rare. A blood moon occurs during a lunar eclipse when faint red sunbeams peek out around the edges of the Earth, giving it a reddish copper color. And all three of these happened together this week.
Some people were calling it a "lunar trifecta." For me it was simply a “rude awakening.” Sitting there in the early morning I began thinking about how often bazaar difficulties or problems can sometimes hit us in bunches, just like these moon appearances. We can lose a job, get an illness, be in a car accident, all in the same month or even week. Can’t you look back to periods in your life when it feels like you’ve had “please kick me” pasted on the back of your shirt? We might say, “when it rains it pours,” or “that was a one-two punch,” or maybe, “I was just hit with a double whammy.”
But if we can let go of our tendency toward the superstitious, we might be able to see it more like these lunar moments. Because we live in a constantly changing universe, every so often there will be a full moon, during an eclipse, on just the day the moon is closest to the earth. It doesn’t mean we have been targeted somehow, or have failed to make a proper animal sacrifice. Rather it is something that happens in an environment that is persistently and frequently shifting and moving. It used to be that when bad things happened, people would think that the gods were angry, but that is superstition not spirituality.
The promised presence of God does not mean everything will go our way. The truth is God’s presence is with us through all the cycles of the moon and stars and our circumstances. We live in a constantly changing world, which means that good and bad comes our way without warning or predictability. But we can always be sure that no matter what type of moon is in the sky, God will never leave us or forsake us. And we can always count on that.
I found out that this bright moon actually had a name. It’s called a supermoon. What I discovered later was that this full moon was a supper blue blood moon and the last time a blood moon, a blue moon and a supermoon happened at the same time was 152 years ago (one can learn a lot from Google at 5:30 in the morning). A "supermoon" happens when a full moon appears at the precise moment the moon’s orbit is closest to the Earth. This makes the moon larger and brighter by 14%, according to NASA (thus my totally “reasonable” error in mistaking it for a train). Blue moons refer to the appearance of a second full moon in one calendar month and are quite rare. A blood moon occurs during a lunar eclipse when faint red sunbeams peek out around the edges of the Earth, giving it a reddish copper color. And all three of these happened together this week.
Some people were calling it a "lunar trifecta." For me it was simply a “rude awakening.” Sitting there in the early morning I began thinking about how often bazaar difficulties or problems can sometimes hit us in bunches, just like these moon appearances. We can lose a job, get an illness, be in a car accident, all in the same month or even week. Can’t you look back to periods in your life when it feels like you’ve had “please kick me” pasted on the back of your shirt? We might say, “when it rains it pours,” or “that was a one-two punch,” or maybe, “I was just hit with a double whammy.”
But if we can let go of our tendency toward the superstitious, we might be able to see it more like these lunar moments. Because we live in a constantly changing universe, every so often there will be a full moon, during an eclipse, on just the day the moon is closest to the earth. It doesn’t mean we have been targeted somehow, or have failed to make a proper animal sacrifice. Rather it is something that happens in an environment that is persistently and frequently shifting and moving. It used to be that when bad things happened, people would think that the gods were angry, but that is superstition not spirituality.
The promised presence of God does not mean everything will go our way. The truth is God’s presence is with us through all the cycles of the moon and stars and our circumstances. We live in a constantly changing world, which means that good and bad comes our way without warning or predictability. But we can always be sure that no matter what type of moon is in the sky, God will never leave us or forsake us. And we can always count on that.
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