Choosing Light Over Darkness on the Day of the Eclipse at the Abortion Center

Eclipse shadows all over my face and our deck during the totality of Eclipse in Charlotte

The talk of the nation was all centered on the eclipse yesterday. I was prepared, having made a viewing box per the Boy Scouts instructions. Maybe it wasn't as fancy as solar eclipse glasses, but those were sold out and cost money. My box was free.

But first, as on all Mondays, I went to the sidewalks of the abortion center to plead with the women to choose life. Every one of our team members spent time calling out to the women, and most of us mentioned the clear symbolism of the eclipse. The sun would be darkened, but then would pass into light again. Please Mamas, choose light, choose life. Run from the darkness of sin and the evil of abortion. Run to the Light of the Lord!

In truly miraculous succession, three women in a row left the abortion center! Two told us they chose life. A third drove away, and then came back to tell me she had chosen life as well. We had worked so fervently to speak of Jesus, hope, and His light shining in the darkness that this precious woman felt compelled to tell us she had changed her mind; she wanted us to know.

I offered her our full complement of resources, all of which she needed. She was overcome with gratitude, having no idea so much help was available. Then we began talking about God and I shared the truth of the Gospel with her. She told me she had wandered from God, let the desires of the world pull her away from what she knew God wanted for her life.

"If I act, dress, and look just like the world...is Jesus really who I am following?" she asked herself. What a beautiful, insightful opening for me to share the wonderful truth of the Gospel.

 I asked if she would like to ask Him now to be Lord of her life, to repent of her sins, and to live now in submission to His will. She would! There, in her car, in front of the very place where she had faced her greatest temptation yet to disregard God, she prayed to ask Jesus to be her Lord and Savior.

After we prayed together, she told me that now she just needed strength to stay true to God. I told her our strength would always fail, but God's NEVER would. She had not known about the empowerment of the Holy Spirit which indwells every believer. I think she was comforted to know that in the Holy Spirit we have a friend, a guide, power, and strength to lead us to righteousness. We do not walk alone.

A fourth person left the center without aborting! Now it was time for the eclipse. I hurried home, and sat in my back yard with my eclipse box, guaranteed to work by the Boy Scouts of America.

As the eclipse progressed, I gazed in my box and saw the moon slowly eating away at the full bright image of the sun. It reminded me of how insidiously bit by bit sin robs us of the light of truth, of God. Our world becomes darker and darker as we fall prey to the enticement of sin's pleasures for a season, losing the vision of what the full bright glory of God in our lives is meant to be.

It was a small image in my box, but clear. As the moon continued to move across the blazing sun, the sky slowly darkened. The Mourning doves, which I usually only hear in the morning, began to coo. And then, as the eclipse was about 5 minutes from totality (which in Charlotte was 98% occlusion of the sun), the crickets began chirping. The video below does not really capture the eerie lighting, but you can hear the crickets.

I was a little sad I could not look at the sun, and was wishing I had managed to scrounge up some glasses. As totality hit its zenith, I returned to my porch and saw a miracle. THOUSANDS of little crescent corollas of the sun danced across my deck.

I had not expected that AT ALL! It was spectacularly beautiful, those cast images of the sun!  I could not look directly at the sun or I'd be blinded, but God had let me see it's glory in a completely unimagined way.

Isn't that just like God? To take the darkness and shatter it with glimmering pieces of light to fill us with joy, with hope, with life! And not as we anticipate God might send us revelation, but in a most unlikely manner....like a baby who would be born to save the world.

My son posted a picture on Facebook similar to the one above. He too had seen the beautiful images of the sun in his city, five hours from me. He too was awed by the beauty and wonder of it. It warmed my heart to know my dear son gazed on the same shimmering waves of beauty and was moved by them as I was.

It was God proclaiming, "Out of the darkness, light! Out of ashes, beauty! Out of death, life!"

All the universe was shouting His glory, on the sidewalks of the abortion center in the heartbeats of four saved babies, and in the crescent gleams of light on my porch. To God be all glory and praise!

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Ephesians 5:14

For anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says, “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”