When Jesus told his disciples a new command, he was succinct: love one another. It was given on a dark day that was marked on the eve of betrayal and the next day on which Christ payed the price for every sin through the ages. It was a statement among a series of remarks in a small place to men with no power in themselves.
This seems a long distance from observing a moonrise on the Blue Ridge. But is it? My wife and I had a couple of difficult days. We had disagreed about some matters, had argued, and had not been very gracious to each other. In Christ there is only one choice: humble yourself. So we found a path to reconcile; we apologized for some actions and attitudes; we started moving forward together. After stumbling through the day a bit, we added something to our plan: why not go to the Blue Ridge and watch a moon rise. As the afternoon passed, we got a few things done but also began to put a few things together to take. But the simple plan also gave us an opportunity to “love one another” — to work and walk in a common direction to assert our love.
The observing started with dragging out two little refractors, setting up a couple chairs, and sharing snacks and drinks while we watched the sunset. We broke open a simple sketch kit and began to capture some of the foothills to the East. We are quite different in our observing, so we were picking up different things. Then people began to come, and they kept coming. We watched the moon rise over the foothills and low clouds while cycling folks through the scopes. We told them about what they were seeing and sketched between the conversations. By night’s end, over 20 people–old, young, white, black, hispanic, women, men–had looked through the scopes, watched the sketching, asked questions, and relaxed. We talked about what the Lord had made and watched the wonder of it all.
Linda’s sketch is below.
Linda captures things in a dramatic way, and does it quickly. Her approach is bolder than mine and she magnifies things that impress her. So the mountains are exaggerated and the moon section of the sketch appears to be an an inset. The moon with the black bands shows her observation as a bank of clouds spread themselves over the lunar face.
While she was adding the mixture of dramatic colors that she saw, I worked on an image of the moon as it had just cleared the low clouds. It was a golden elipse above the ridges. Then I tried a quick capture of the cloud bands as they crossed a bit later. Last, I tried to get one crater that was prominent.
After four hours, we were packing in the quiet of the night. No one was present except us. The sky had cleared and the moon was white and bright. Our hearts were lighter also. We had chosen to love at a difficult moment. This is how relationships last and marriages stay together. After 38 years, we know. All over again we had a practical reminder of the power of Christ’s work in us, if we would just do things his way, as he commanded.
