Sun Day (part 3)

On the day of the solar eclipse, special glasses were a must. You couldn’t look directly at the sun. It was so bright that you couldn’t see the moon inching its way into its path until a moment before totality. Just a slimmer of sun still lit up the sky and hurt your eyes.

So we were warned, over and over, don’t look at the sun during the eclipse. It’s tempting, but it will hurt. Yet with the glasses, everything else was blacked out. The sun was a tiny, orange ball—the moon, a tinier, black spot, slowing eating away at it. There was a heavy filter between my eyes and the spheres, but it was the only way I could possibly witness them.

A few days later, I was driving to church. Normally, driving east, the sun is right in my face. But this morning was particularly foggy. I turned a corner which normally blasts me with bright light. But the fog was thick. I looked up, and I could see the dull, white ball of the sun. It wasn’t blinding me like normal. The fog allowed me to look directly at it.

I don’t see the sun that often. I see sunlight, obviously. I see daytime. I see the colors of sunrises and sunsets. I see rooms lit up by natural light pouring in windows. I see reflections and shadows. But the sun itself is too bright, too powerful. That fireball is millions of miles away yet feels dangerous close. Looking at it will hurt me. I need a filter.

We all know where this is going, right? The face of God is too much for meek humans to handle. We can’t look directly at him. Life on earth is sustained by him. We see the light all around, but we cannot see him directly. But through a fog, we somehow see him clearer. Through others—their actions, their hearts, their intercessions—we can gaze closer than we could with a naked eye.

The eclipse made me think about the sun much more than I normally do. It’s so prominent that I don’t actually think about that often. But there it is, routinely, giving heat and light, bouncing and reflecting, sometimes dancing. Sometimes it takes a moon or a fog for me to realize how much I love it.