As the sky started growing dark Monday afternoon, I had a flashback.
It was after we had dropped our daughter off at a friend's house for an eclipse-viewing party and were on the way to the local school with our other two kids to watch for ourselves.
The drive through town was like a scene out of a Norman Rockwell painting, with crowds of onlookers, families, sports teams, nursing home patients, and store patrons scurrying out to the road as though they were catching the Fourth of July parade passing by.
This time, however, they were all huddling together, staring to the heavens, pointing at the sky, with looks of amazement, excitement, and awe.
That's when it hit me.
When I was a boy growing up in Terre Haute, Indiana, we went to a small Christian church on the outside of town. There was the main sanctuary, a couple classrooms, the minister's office, and then the secretary's workspace. Hanging above the copy machine was a picture that depicted the rapture - an event that some Christians believe will see Jesus returning to draw His faithful followers to heaven before turmoil and judgment strike the Earth.
My personal views on "end times" aside, that picture has always stuck with me: Cars driven off the side of the road, crowds of people gathering, faces turned towards the heavens in shock. Scenes incredibly similar to what I witnessed yesterday, and it got me thinking.
Every day we are so obsessive over the most menial of duties, so mesmerized by the eternally insignificant, so consumed by matters that one day very soon will be forgotten forever. We panic over elections, fixate on contemptuous words written on social media, and devote the full company of our attention to maintaining our homes, cars, gardens, and grocery supplies. We regularly fail to look heavenward, to ponder what lies outside the surly bonds of earth.
It was remarkable for those of us in the path of yesterday's eclipse to see the often-times hidden mass of humanity that surrounds us, collectively pause their busy lives to observe the wonders of powers so much larger than us. If only for a few fleeting minutes, there was an inescapable awareness of our own frailty, our own relative insignificance in comparison to not only the heavens, but the unimaginable Power that created and controls it.
The part of Central Indiana where I live was fortunate enough to experience the full solar eclipse, with day turning to night, for about a four-minute stretch. Besides my son freaking out because he thought maybe his protective glasses might not be working, it was an awesome experience.
Around us, I saw faces lifted upward that seemed to be subconsciously echoing the words of the Psalmist, "What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?"
How different our lives might be - how different might we make the lives around us - if we lived with that sense of humility, that spirit of meekness on a daily basis.
As much as we try to make it, this life isn't about us or the painfully ordinary things we believe we are accomplishing. Ultimately, it's all about our Creator and God. The One who, with just His spoken word, set into motion a world upon which we are mere passengers for a moment.
Each of us are given a universally unique opportunity: To spend our short time staring at the small space of dirt we occupy, or gaze towards and glorify the God to whom all things, including our very souls, belong.
