Sunday afternoon is always when I forget things. It's inevitable. The weekly practice of both ingesting and pouring out a "word from the Lord" to the people takes most of my mental energy. What's left over goes towards being a pastor to the people - listening to my congregation's concerns and weekly highlights. By the time I'm done shaking hands and passing stories, it's all I can do to remember where I put my keys to the car. So it is I stumble into my office around 12:30 pm. After I find those keys, I usually am aware enough to grab my wallet and my phone before slipping a few books and my weekly planner into my backpack. Invariably, though, something is left behind.
All of that is just to explain why I was standing outside of my house on Monday shortly after 2:00 pm seeking to invent some strategy to watch the solar eclipse. Back on my desk at the church were my specially designed "eclipse glasses," leaving me exposed to the one danger almost everyone knew to avoid. I could risk it and look directly up towards the sky - hoping to catch a bit of the heavenly glory. But, even I am not that stupid.
What I did do was rig some system of catching the moon inching across the sun's surface. I turned my back to the sun while keeping my sunglasses on and held my cell phone out like I was taking a selfie. And there against the black screen of my little Motorola phone, I watched as we got tantalizing close to full totality.
Flirting with the danger.
Knowing all the while that such brilliance was not to be toyed with.
It was only afterwards I realized how potent this whole scene was for a term that many modern people have a hard time swallowing. That expression? The fear of the Lord.
If you read through the Bible, you'll find the term bounced around quite a bit. It becomes clear in the thunder and celestial wonders of Exodus and the desert wanderings that this fear is instrumental to faith. The Lord of the Old Testament comes with fire and hidden in lightning-infused clouds. There's power in this Redeemer of Israel, a power that causes Moses to tremble and quiver and his people to insist that he serve as mediator.
And, it's not just the Old Testament. Ventures into the apocalyptic language of Peter's speech at Pentecost or into the vision John receives on the island of Patmos make the same thing clear: faith begins with a healthy regard for a potent, holy God.
In our culture, fear is rightly seen as a bad thing. We associated fear with a type of immature or even abusive force seeking to coerce and manipulate us. Fear is the instrument of abusive husbands or deceptive politicians. Fear is what greedy businesses use to spend more money. And this fear is what we are trained from an early age to resist or grow beyond.
And that kind of fear is to be overcome. Absolutely.
But this is an entirely different thing than what the Bible talks about when referring to the fear of the Lord. The idea of the "fear of the Lord" is not a blind submission to a higher authority (God as the dominant Patriarch). No, the biblical idea of fear is a mixture of awe plus trepidation. It is the awareness that you're standing in the presence of something beautiful. So beautiful, in fact, that to look directly into it is to put yourself in severe danger.
We must, just like with the solar eclipse, find a mediating way to see the brilliance. We must find a way to experience this heavenly glory without it blinding us.
This is the quintessential meaning of God's holiness. A holiness so strong, so pure, so blindingly beautiful, that to experience it with only our human eyes is to put ourselves in mortal danger.
Of course, it was still spectacular standing out there in my yard looking at the eclipse, even with my rather rudimentary concoction. Even more impressive was to see how - for a brief moment - so many in our nation had turned their attention over to this great event, to see the crowds gathered in places like Hopkinsville, KY and Columbia, SC all staring up at the sky. Then there were the stories and Facebook posts of all those who had traveled for so many hours just to be in the right place to catch a glimpse of something so divine for a few brief minutes at most. Hundreds of thousands of faces, if not millions, standing beneath a heavenly sky - eager and hopeful of catching a glimpse of something so wonderul that it drove reporters to tears and children to silence.
There's that now-dated worship song titled "Come, Now Is the Time to Worship," and in it there's a line about how one day every knee will bow and every tongue confess the greatness of the Lord. But, the greatest treasure, the song says, is for those who gladly and freely choose to see that greatness now. That's the lesson in this recent eclipse. One day the brilliant holiness of God will shine fully upon the face of the earth. No one will miss it. It will be "totality." Still, there is an invitation. Some can and will seek out the holy brilliance in advance. Some are willing to travel miles and go to great lengths just to be in the right place, to be standing in the presence of the Lord. So close, yet always needing those special lenses whereby we see heavenly beauty with earthly eyes.
Question for reflection: what would it look like for you to take time this week to seek out and bow before the holy brilliance and beauty of God?
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