Covered With Glory

 

May 10th, 2024 at 11:00 PM I opened my front door and peeked at the sky expecting to be disappointed, again. How many times had I dragged my family outside in the cold darkness to see something spectacular only to be disappointed? 

(earlier that evening)

 Luke humored me and we sat outside for about an hour, our lawn chairs facing the northern horizon, not sure what we were even looking for. Grandpa kept turning the porch light on for us so we could "see better". Maybe we saw a faint purple, or green between the trees, but probably it was just our imagination. No use calling anyone else to join us. It was just like the other times, only this time it wasn't as cold. And somehow it didn't seem quite so dark, even though the moon was New. 

We went inside and Luke went to bed, exhausted from a long week of work. I smiled, happy to have spent some quiet moments outside with my soulmate, thankful for the slower pace of Sabbath. It had been an unseasonably warm day. I couldn't decide whether to open the door and let in the cooler night air, or shut the door and keep the dark, and what roams in the dark out! 

Finally, the busyness of the day caught up with me and I decided to go to bed. "We don't get northern lights here." I thought, "and if, by some odd chance they might be seen at this latitude, we wouldn't be able to see them from our woods. -not where we live."

I decided to open our front door one more time. 

The door that faces south.

What I saw was nothing like the pictures. In fact, if I hadn't heard there was a possibility of seeing them, I wouldn't have given, what I was seeing, a second thought. I looked UP! Not just out into the night, but up into the patch of sky above my porch. Beams, pillars of light spread out across the sky! 

"It's here!" I shouted "Luke! Are you still awake? If you aren't, wake up!" he came out and we stared at the sky. 

It was so bright outside, yet I couldn't locate the source of the light. Faint wisps that looked very much like light pollution, or thin clouds, appeared in the sky.

I got comfortable and stared into the darkness. The more I looked, the more I saw!

 My first thought was how easy this would be to miss- to not see. I wondered how many times these lights had been dancing above my head and I didn't even realize they were there! Faint whispers. A breeze. A gentle glow. Sights very easy to brush off as something ORDINARY and INSIGNIFICANT! 

My second thought was: If THIS is how amazing the glory of the sun is... that created fireball in the sky... how awesome the Glory of God must be!

Then, my daughter came out with her phone. We had heard there was more to see than what our eyes could capture. What our eyes saw as a faint whisper of pink above the trees was a fuchsia blanket that covered the whole sky! What we saw as a thin, wispy cloud was a vibrant-colored angel defending our earth from solar wind particles.

Now that I knew what I was seeing, my eyes could see it a bit too. Look! Those "clouds" were moving and dancing. The color WAS all over the sky! I could see it now. Faintly, but the more I sat still and watched the more I saw.

I am not good at handling unusual situations. 

I didn't think this was important enough to wake up more people. :(

I still thought this was more common than I realized, or that tomorrow's show would be better, or that others wouldn't be impressed.

So, I sat still and watched.

 Half imagining, half seeing... the train of His robe filling the temple as the cloudy curtain grew to cover a huge portion of the sky. ...a round ball of light with another circle inside of it...

The Glory of God COVERING the whole earth! As the camera screen lit up with colors more vibrant than exist in nature.

WHAT IS REAL?

Could it be that my fleshly eyes cannot see what is really there, right in front of me? I can catch glimpses and hints, but not really SEE!

"Glory, glory. The whole earth is filled with His Glory." I whispered, because it seemed wrong to shout. I wanted to sing, but that didn't seem quite right either, for it seemed that this music was enjoyed with the eyes instead the ears.

I didn't know what to do with this experience. Part of me wanted to say it was imagined and I was overreacting. But the pictures the next morning proved that the opposite was true. 

I had no idea how awesome, or rare, what I was viewing was. 

I left before it was over, thinking I could watch it again tomorrow, or the next day. Not knowing this may have been my only chance to experience this.

Of course there is a spiritual lesson in this. Many lessons. New and peculiar lessons! Lessons that I am sure you became aware of too, if you happened to be up in the middle of the night and lived in an area where you could see the show.

The spiritual realm is a great mystery. 

Unseen angels are protecting us from invisible dangers.

 It sounds made up. It's just cotton candy clouds, or my eyes imagining a hint of color. There is no such thing as Aurora. But it is more real that the things we can see in the bright light of the day.

Why did the night seem so bright when the moon had already set, and the colors of Aurora Borealis were so faint to the naked eye? Is that a taste of the brightness of God's Glory? The glory that will light that Holy City! The Glory that is covering the earth, that will cover the whole earth.

That Sabbath I read Revelation 4 and Ezekiel 1, wondering if what Ezekiel and John saw was similar to the pictures shown on my daughter's phone. 

But the picture that impressed me most was the picture on my little android phone taken at the same time and place as the picture above:

I admit it. I don't know how to take pictures. :D

I WAS using the "night" setting! 

But somehow, instead of enhancing the beauty, my camera showed even LESS of what my eyes could see!

Why do I still have this black picture on my camera? Why didn't I delete it immediately? I wasn't sure until I read this verse: Job 3:20 "Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, and life to the bitter in soul?"  Maybe I should name my camera "Job"! lol  

At this horrific time of tragedy in Job's life, he WANTED it to be DARK! He didn't want LIFE. He didn't want SUNSHINE. He wanted to sit in his misery, bitterness and pain. But near the end of the Book of Job he is enlightened. God shows him His Power and a taste of His Glory! So, in the last chapter Job admits: "I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now my EYE seeth!" He had an iphone now! HAHA! He could see the glory surrounding him and defending him from things he didn't even know existed! Things too wonderful for his human brain to comprehend!

Suddenly it was okay that he didn't understand. 

And I like to think the light didn't hurt his eyes as much.

Seeing the natural laws working as they were created to, helped me trust that God is working in the spiritual realm as well. 

Maybe our circumstances in life affect how we see the world around us. Maybe it is hard to see the glory that shines so brightly in other people's worldview. Maybe we shut our eyes to the beauty, explain it away, or ignore it. Or, maybe, the lens that we are looking through is not capturing anything at all. All we see is the darkness. Something to shut out and run from.

Next time your world view looks like my second picture, stop for a minute. Find a comfy spot on the grass and look UP! 

You just might notice that the night is a lot brighter than it seems. And that there is beauty even on the darkest night of the month!

And back in the physical realm, if we get another chance to see the Aurora Borealis in our area, I'm not going to be embarrassed to swing my door open and wake up the whole family. Now that I think of it, I would rather them be disappointed that nothing happened, than to be disappointed that they missed it! 

Come to think of it, maybe THAT paragraph isn't only talking about the physical realm either! ;)