On particularly beautiful moonlit nights, when in good company and feeling exuberant, I often start singing a song called “I See The Moon.” Its childlike melody and sweet lyrics are irresistible, and a surprising number of people have asked me to teach it to them after embarrassing myself by belting it out in public.
I see the moon
And the moon sees me
And the moon sees somebody I want to see
So God bless the moon
And God bless me
And God bless the somebody I want to see
As a little girl, watching the moon and watching the moon
“follow” me shaped my understanding of the omniscient God. It was a visible
example of how God could see everyone at once, yet focus on each individual.
The moon “followed” me, but it also “followed” my mother. Knowing this did not
diminish by one iota the amount of love I felt when the moon trailed my four
year old head around the yard, somehow finding me everywhere…finding me again a
few nights later, ready to resume our game of hide-and-seek.
This continuous pursuit was, and is, deeply comforting.
Humans need continuity. In a transient and disorienting culture, points of contact
stabilize us. That the moon will be visible to us, its cycle permitting,
whether we move from Boston to Botswana is a wonderful gift. If we are far from
all that is familiar, we can look at the moon, and receive a sense of place and
proportion on this earth. It is a beacon that reminds us that we are always home.
It is difficult to imagine a world where anything else
could be the case: an empty sky, night after night, lacking an object that
every soul on the planet could point to in recognition. How isolated would we
feel across countries and cultures if we did not have the moon in common, uniting us with its light and beauty? How
dark and hopeless would the world at night be, if all it ever contained was unchanging
blackness?
Of course, the moon is not ever-visible in the sky. Its
phases change, sometimes we see only a part of it, and sometimes nothing at
all. However, the glorious truth of the
moon, as my four year old self found with delight, is that it always returns.
We know that we will see its visage again. Moreover, its very changefulness manages to
surprise us with new loveliness, and fill us with a wonder that would not be possible
if it always came to us in exactly the same way.
Psalm 19 claims that the night sky reveals something of
God: “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his
handywork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge.” The heavens, and indeed all of creation, speak to us in a
language more meaningful than words. The handywork of God communicates directly
with His creatures here on earth. It tells us about the Love that made us, and
the Love that pursues us to this day.
What does the moon say of God? I don’t know definitively,
but I think it has said to me:
We are always under the moon’s sight. We are always under
God’s sight. Because of our own lack of perspective, we cannot always see the
moon. Because of our own lack of perspective, we cannot always see God.
No matter where we go or what we do, the moon never
abandons us. No matter where we go or what we do, our Father never leaves us. We
are always pursued and loved. We are always home.
