Eclipse

I love Northern Ireland. I was born here  and although I have lived in other places for periods of time over my 70 years, when I boarded a plane for Belfast,  I felt I was coming home. I enjoy our climate… in the main… but, like many of you out there, I would love to move the island a few hundred miles South. We get enough sun to miss it when it hibernates and enough rain for it to feature in some form in almost all conversations. It is so significant that we have a myriad of names to describe it. Our pessimism towards the potential of a soaking  can begin with the observation,  “It’s a soft day and it’s trying to rain”. This becomes  “ a few spits there” which soon become “light drizzle”, then through, “ a steady mizzle” to “ a light shower” soon to deliver “rain which would fairly wet you” quicky turning into to “It’s teeming, lashing or pelting down’. We have even created a category called “sun showers” in some vain hope that the sun might soon appear. I will omit other descriptions of  rainfall for after the watershed (see what I did there?)  
I would have loved the sun to have made an appearance on Monday night so I could have seen the eclipse… but all that was visible was a grey cloud cover. 
Eclipses are amazing events, whether lunar or solar in nature. It might surprise you to know that they can happen up to seven times every year. The ancients feared them, indeed the Greek root of the word eclipse means abandonment or downfall. It seemed to them that the earth had been abandoned by the Gods – not surprising as the longest known total eclipse was over 7 minutes. 
I had the privilege to witness a near total eclipse while working with the church in Uganda. It was 16 February 1980. In those days before the internet and mobile phones I had no idea an eclipse was due. It was one of the strangest experiences of my life. About 10 minutes before it happened, the animals and birds started to make their cries heard, all at once it seemed. Then, as an eerie twilight drew in, they all stopped and there was a freaky silence, as I witnessed the eclipse in awe. 
As 80% of the sun was covered, things got quite dark and many of the young children who lived beside me ran for the comfort of their family. Like the ancients they felt abandoned. Where was God?
But God had not discarded his creation.  The sun returned again. 
When God seems to have abandoned us, we would do well to remember that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Just as the sun was still there though heavily obscured, so too is the one who created the sun and moon.