I believe I was in high school. A freshman perhaps, and as you might recall from a previous entry, young and shy. My volleyball team was traveling back in that all too familiar yellow box of a bus with torn plastic seats and dangling seatbelts. We were a decent team, but pretty sure we lost that game, so the pack of girls this school bus carried didn’t hold with them the excitement of victory. The team’s juniors and seniors sat, per usual, at the back of the bus, an occasional squeal of teenage conversation projecting from their seats. I kept to myself somewhere in the middle of this hollowed out twinkie, gazing into the evening’s darkness, knees propped up on the seat in front of me, ready to be home, sleeping soundly on the unrest of defeat. I don’t recall the loss bothering me too much. More than likely I was thinking about homework or some boy. Though one thought in particular I can remember as clearly as Monday night’s sky. Illuminating ever so vividly was a circular shape of beaming red. The moon? Yes, the moon! In seconds my heart fluttered as I recollected what I had heard in Sunday School teachings and family dinner conversations… that the moon would turn to red at His coming. This was it! Jesus was coming!! Until, an instantaneous moment later, I realized that this vision of a moon was instead the reflection of a red light from inside my moving caravan. Though a triumphal entry was only imminent for a moment, I can still recall the excitement of being heaven bound. The home that us volleyball girls were routinely traveling to just didn’t cut it. I wanted to go HOME. Though for that night, it seemed Cambridge, New York would have to make do.
Going home is still precious to me. The love that my family so evidently gives has become a safe haven, an oasis, even amidst the difficulties that our family has faced. We have faced them all together, and for that, home will always be a place of comfort and refuge. Even so, each moment of time I am given still finds a way to remind me of a deeper yearning. The hope of my existence lies beyond the temporary reality of this world. Death will otherwise swallow us whole, and all that we’ve gained will be left to another so that they may struggle in its insecurity. As Paul stated in a letter he wrote to the first century Corinthians, “If only for this life we have hope in [Jesus], we are to be pitied more than all men.” The future looks grim for all of us, those of faith and those without, if all that is to be lived is this life alone. Though Paul immediately continued in his writing, stating, “But [Jesus] has indeed been raised from the dead!” Therein lies my hope.
It sounds pretty crazy, I know. Not sure that it sounds crazier than the world being made out of nothing or life amounting to no more than death. As a matter of fact, we all need to give credence to unbelievable things all the time, whether believer or atheist. Take the moon for instance. Late Monday night and early Tuesday morning (dependent upon where you were standing), you could see the moon turn a brilliant hue of red as it entered a total lunar eclipse; the first of four to occur in an 18 month period. Wow, what a sight. Jordan and I, both with cozy cups of hot chocolate and I balancing in the other hand my camera, stood in awe and silence at the beauty that we were beholding. The fact that it was three in the morning didn’t even phase us. We felt privileged to witness such a rare beauty. That is, rare until recently. Some are pointing skeptically to so-called “religious extremists” who are connecting this incredibly uncommon tetrad to the imminent return of Jesus and foreshadowing of significant change in Israel to align with Biblical prophecy, as past tetrads have done. (If you want to hear how this is true, simply google “When was the last tetrad?” and history will speak for itself.) Others are seeing this display a bit more simply, and although rare and brilliant, a phenomenon that is natural to the movement of the universe and stands apart from any coinciding prophetic circumstances. Whatever theological, agnostic, religious, or atheistic position you take, you must know that you find yourself in the midst of a magnificent spectacle of existence. You can choose to take the brilliance of the sky as no more than the result of a world we were crafted into by moving molecules, or consider the possibility that the world was created by a God who uses the scientific order of His creation to reveal to us His majesty, and ultimately, His return.
It has always bothered me that science and creation have attempted to oppose one another. If you believe in the creation of the universe by one God, than why do you fear that the logic of science and explanation will overrule God’s involvement? By proclaiming He is the Creator you are in essence proclaiming that He knows His creation intimately. Therefore God designed the reason and order that purposefully and intentionally give evidence to His very existence. If you otherwise state that science out proves creation, than you are choosing to give no credence to, whether intentionally or naively, the things you cannot explain. You ignore those elements that science cannot justify, meanwhile acknowledging that the unexplainable does indeed exist.
We have four total lunar eclipses, or blood moons, all occurring on Jewish holidays, both of which Jesus, while walking the earth, used in a bold way to proclaim, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows Me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” Does the Bible speak of the moon turning blood-red? Yes. Do we read of the earth groaning and the sea tossing in increased measure? Yep. Was it foretold that wars would become ever prominent and on a larger scale of world-wide opposition? Indeed. Were we warned, as people of faith, that false teacher’s would multiply and so to stand firm in order to discern their lies? You bet. Has all of this happened since Jesus walked the earth and in growing measure within the last century? Whether you like it or not, that part is irrefutably true, so you have a choice to make. Either coincidence and the natural course of human tendencies have happened to align with the proclamations of one crazy man who died brutally and uselessly for His words, or Jesus was right and ever so fortunately reminding us even now that life is far bigger than what you can touch, and far more magnificent than what the cycle of death and the end of logic can provide. He said it himself, “See, I have told you ahead of time.”
