This is Pastor Tim’s Article which appeared in the Evening Leader on Tuesday, April 9, 2024
With all of the talk about the Eclipse, I had a cloudy memory bouncing around in my mind. I can vaguely remember an eclipse that happened when I was very young. I went back and checked and it appears there was an eclipse that would have been visible in Ohio on May 30, 1984. I would have been 9 and that sounds about right. The biggest thing I remember about it is that in school, we did a science project where we all built eclipse viewers out of shoe boxes. I actually went and verified that these exist. Go to YouTube and search for “How to make a shoebox solar eclipse viewer” and you will find a 1-minute video on how to make one. I just don’t want you to think that I am losing my mind thinking there is such a thing as a shoebox eclipse viewer. To be honest, I am embarrassed to say I looked it up before I wrote it just to make sure the shoebox viewer was a real thing.
I was wondering how they can predict the exact minutes of an eclipse and I found something interesting. There is a website you can go to that will tell you when all of the eclipses will be for the next few hundred years. I guess once you know the path the moon takes around the earth and the path the earth takes around the sun, it is all just math after that. I am not going to pretend to know how it works, but suffice it to say, someone a whole lot smarter than me figured this out.
I am writing this article on April 2, or just about a week prior to the eclipse. That means that by the time you read this article, you are going to know a whole lot more about the events of the eclipse than I do now. I know that we are expecting many people from out of town to be here for the event. I just hope that the clouds blow away so that we can actually see something because the next eclipse that will be visible in North America won’t be until 2044 and will only be visible in Montana and the Dakotas.
Many major historical events happen around eclipses. In 1453, there was an eclipse that happened right around the time of the Roman empire being defeated and banished from what we know today as the East. In 585, there was a major battle between the Lydians and the Medes when an eclipse happened and caused the two warring sides to stop fighting. There was even a lunar eclipse that took place on April 3, 33 AD, which also happens to have been the date of Passover that year. The Bible makes mention that at the death of Jesus Christ, the sky did go dark for three hours. Admittedly, an eclipse could not account for that length of darkness, but it is interesting to note this detail.
At the end of the day, the eclipse is just an astrological event much like a full moon or a sunset. There is nothing mythical or magical about it. It is just very cool. I want to thank Laura Yelton and SMART for their work in organizing the event for the community. Again, I am praying that Mother Nature smiles upon St. Marys and blesses us with better weather both for being outside and for looking up at the sky.
In all of the festivities and the day off of school and work (for many of you), this will be a time to see something we only get to see a couple of times in a lifetime. It is special and it is also proof that God created a wonderful and wondrous world for us to inhabit. It is a reminder that for all of our disagreements, we are all sharing this blessed creation together and for this moment in time, everyone of every stripe or persuasion all looked to the sky to see something and stand in awe of it. We can go back to fighting with each other when it is over. Fear not, the eclipse won’t last long and we can all get back to chasing the wind very quickly once it is over. But for the few moments that it happened, I pray you took a moment and counted your blessings. We truly do live in a magnificent world. Want