‘By the light of the silvery Moon …’

Noticed the moon recently? If you listen to the radio, you’ll likely have heard reports recently about NASA preparing for the second in a series of complex ‘Artemis’ missions that will enable human exploration at the Moon and future missions to Mars. Be that as it may, there’s still nothing quite so lovely as having been surprised by the unexpected bright light of a full moon – especially first thing of amorning.

The moon has of course no light of its own. Whenever we see the Moon, we see light reflected from the Sun. It’s light from our Sun which picks out the meteor-battered surface of what is otherwise largely consolidated rock dust – all quite dark and mysterious on the other side, the side we never see. And in a similar kind of way, the Psalms in the Bible tell us that though we hear no voice, yet the ‘sound’ of God’s glory is ‘heard’ because the stars and the planets are ‘telling out’ the wonder of their Creator.

The book Genesis speaks of God as has having made humankind in his image and likeness. Now at a graveside I regularly recite ‘earth to earth … dust to dust’ but I also on other occasions read of ‘the glory of God being seen in the face of the man Jesus Christ’. The privilege and wonder of our having been made in God’s image and likeness is that by the illuminating power of God’s unseen Spirit, ordinary earth-and-dust creatures like you and me can become Christ-like so we too reflect the glory of God’s goodness and love into the situations and circumstances of our everyday lives. That’s rather lovely and pretty amazing too, don’t you think?