The plan in Vallonia, Indiana, involves moon pies.
The sun will start to vanish at 1:49 p.m. The wide blue sky that stretches over the cornfields and soybeans along State Route 135 will grow darker and darker, until, after about an hour and quarter-hour, the small farming community of 379 souls shall be forged into night.
The moon—invisible to the human eye except as an empty space—will overshadow every little thing. For a minute, after which two, after which three, stars shall be visible within the sky. The colours of the world will seem all flawed. And Vallonia will go through eclipse totality.
At Driftwood Christian Church, people will look up on the sky and say, “Wow!” and “Ooo!” and “Look at that!” And they may munch on moon pies decorated with the words of Jesus in John 8:12: “I’m the sunshine of the world. Whoever follows me won’t ever walk in darkness.”
Pastor Daniel Ison said it was the church’s evangelism committee that got here up with the plan. They bought the cookie-and-marshmallow snacks and wrote out the Scripture verse, time and again, tons of of times.
The Independent Christian Church of about 170 doesn’t understand how many visitors they’ll get. But they expect plenty of people will drive out to see the eclipse on Monday, April 8. The celestial phenomenon is a rare thing and there won’t be one other one within the contiguous US for an additional 20 years. So the congregation decided to open up the church, its bathrooms, and the sphere around their constructing to welcome out-of-town visitors to a celebration of creation.
“That God created something like this for us to enjoy—God’s similar to, Enjoy my creation, on an epic scale!—I believe you simply need to be in awe,” Ison told CT. “Even the undeniable fact that the dimensions of the moon and the gap between the moon and the sun must be exact for this to be a thing—the majesty of it’s amazing.”
Driftwood is considered one of many evangelical congregations in the trail of totality that’s planning an enormous event for the eclipse, a bit of greater than every week after Easter. In addition to moon pies, churches from Texas to Maine shall be feeding people ice cream, passing out eclipse-themed tracts, selling T-shirts that say “In him there is no such thing as a darkness in any respect” (1 John 1:5), and giving freely NASA-approved eclipse glasses.
This week Christians are busy inviting friends, neighbors, and strangers to hitch them for an experience of awe.
“It’s an emotional thing to see a solar eclipse,” said Jeff Stone, a Southern Baptist in Kerrville, Texas, where totality will start at about 1:32 p.m. central time and last greater than 4 minutes. “It’s technically amazing, however it’s also visceral. It’s a visceral experience and also you begin to wonder concerning the universe and God and every little thing God puts in your path.”
Stone, who is thought within the Kerrville area as “Mr. Eclipse,” though he says people don’t call him that to his face, saw his first total eclipse in Mexico in 1991. He and his wife were so moved and amazed that they threw themselves into astronomy. They built their very own telescope—four-feet long with an eight-inch mirror that they ground by hand, similar to Isaac Newton, though Newton probably didn’t do it in his kitchen.
A number of years later, Stone went to work for NASA on the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston. He worked for mission control, training future astronauts how you can fix mechanical things in space.
He knows how an eclipse can change your life. And for him, science has at all times been a component of his faith, Stone told CT.
“I have a look at the night sky and think, Thank you, Lord, for the chance to see this,” he said. “I attempt to share that with other people and check out to assist them have that type of wonder.”
Since Stone has retired, he’s joined the town of Kerrville’s eclipse committee and has kept up a full schedule of talks. A number of weeks before Easter, he was averaging two talks a day in schools, churches, homeowners’ associations, Rotary clubs, and anywhere else they wanted him. He can talk for 10 minutes or 90 on the mechanics of eclipses, why they occur after they occur, and how you can prepare to view them safely.
He at all times makes a degree of claiming the eclipse is an element of the design of creation.
“That type of gets people—surprises them,” Stone said. “We’re living in a weird time and individuals are kind of afraid to confess their spiritual side. Something like this draws it out of them a bit of bit. Our pastor has been talking about how you may have to concentrate on what’s occurring around you and who God puts in your path, and I’m trying to try this.”
Nine hundred miles north in Carbondale, Illinois, Phil Nelson can be looking out for people God puts in his path. He has about 30,000 tracts to provide them.
The tracts are printed in glossy color on high-quality paper. The front has an artist’s rendering of an eclipse. The back has a message: “God has a way so that you can escape everlasting darkness.” Nelson expects people will keep them as souvenirs, so they may not only read them the day of the eclipse but save them, and skim them again in the longer term.
Carbondale is the eclipse crossroads of America. It’s on the intersection where the trail of totality will cross the trail that the last eclipse cut across the country seven years ago. Back in 2017, 200,000 visitors showed as much as witness the event within the Southern Illinois college town.
Nelson and members of Lakeland Baptist Church passed out eclipse tracts that yr too, but they were dissatisfied with how few people wanted to have interaction in deeper spiritual questions.
“It was type of a celebration scene,” the Southern Baptist pastor said.
He’s hopeful that this yr, more people will ask questions. He expects some, no less than, concerning the end times.
There’s a picture going around social media making wild speculations concerning the prophetic import of the eclipse, claiming the trail of totality will undergo six places named Nineveh. Jesus once spoke concerning the “sign of the prophet Jonah” (Matt. 12:39), who went to the unique Nineveh to proclaim God’s judgment.
The image is flawed. The path of totality will only go through Nineveh, Indiana, and Nineveh, Ohio. It will miss the Ninevehs in Texas, Pennsylvania, and New York, in addition to two others in Missouri and Virginia. A town in Nova Scotia with the identical name will experience a partial eclipse. Also, Jesus is pretty clear the sign of Jonah isn’t an astronomical event but “the Son of Man” spending “three days and three nights in the guts of the earth” (Matt. 12:40).
Nelson said he’s “not a date-setter” anyway, and doesn’t think the eclipse portends the Apocalypse. But if people ask him if the eclipse is an indication, he’s ready with a solution.
“It’s an indication that God is pursuing you,” Nelson will say. “He arranged the planet and the moon and the star to call you to himself. You got here to Carbondale for that reason.”
Other evangelicals have similar plans to redirect end times inquiries.
“We’re not saying, ‘Repent, the top is near!’” said David DeFelice, an elder at Hope Church in Brunswick, Ohio. “You should repent. But we don’t understand how near the top is.”
The Christian and Missionary Alliance congregation is asking their event “Glory within the Skies.” The focus shall be on Psalm 19:1 and the way the eclipse reveals something necessary about who God is.
“It points to a creator God who loves beauty and patterns of regularity,” said DeFelice, who worked 38 years as an engineer and communicator at NASA’s John H. Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. “It points to the design of an awesome creation and we would like to point to that.”
The eclipse within the suburb 20 miles south of Cleveland will start at about 2 p.m. eastern time. The moon will completely cover the sun at about 3:14.
Hope Church expects to have anywhere from 500 to 2,000 people on its 10-acre campus when that happens, including children who’ve been set free of college for the day and immigrant communities who’ve been invited in Spanish and Ukrainian. The church also got a mini-grant from the American Astronomical Society to assist pay for transportation and accessibility accommodations to bring out as many as 200 individuals with physical and developmental disabilities.
DeFelice hopes a few of them will get an experience of community on the event and realize their lives can be higher in the event that they were a part of the church.
“The slogan I got here up with is ‘Join us! Don’t stay alone in the dead of night,’” DeFelice said. “There’s an actual communal aspect to it, the awe and amazement you get, the applause and gasps. It’s higher with a community.”
The pastor, Shawn Brennan, said the church has never done an astronomy-themed outreach event before, however it suits with Hope’s overall vision of serving the community.
“We wish to care about what they care about,” he said. “I believe the times of just existing and putting an indication out front are over. We’re attempting to be intentional in our community, representing the guts of Christ and being an lively presence.”
The idea for an eclipse event got here up at a board meeting about six months ago, Brennan said. Three current and former NASA employees are leaders within the church, including DeFelice. He proposed they hold an event and provides away NASA-approved eclipse glasses. He got here up with a cool design that mixes the Hope Church logo with a picture of a solar eclipse and really helpful the church order 5,000 of them for 59 cents apiece.
“The very first thing that goes through your mind is What if it’s a crummy day in Ohio?” Brennan said. “But we moved pretty quickly to pondering it is a cool opportunity, and we’ve been praying for opportunities.”
The congregation has given away several thousand pairs of glasses ahead of the eclipse. And now people stop by the church almost daily to ask if there are any more. They often stick around for a bit, Brennan said, to ask a matter concerning the church, share a prayer concern, or simply speak about their life.
They sometimes seem surprised at how much they desired to seek advice from a minister. And the minister, in turn, has been surprised at how effective eclipse glasses are at communicating the love and care of Christ to the community.
DeFelice, nevertheless, thinks it type of is smart. He says there’s something deeply similar about an eclipse and Jesus.
“You try to inform people about your faith they usually don’t get it,” he said. “And it’s type of the identical way with an eclipse. People have a look at you, like, What’s the massive deal? And you say, ‘Just trust me. It’s an incredible experience. Just give us a number of minutes. Just try. It’s amazing.’”
So that’s why they’re giving out glasses. And why other evangelicals are giving out tracts, T-shirts, parking spots with bathroom access, and Scripture-adorned moon pies. It’s an invite for people to come back into the shadow of the moon—the trail of eclipse totality—where they simply might see an amazing light.
