Crazy Moon

I’ve seen way more sunsets than moonsets, but this morning God woke me up in time to see a setting supermoon.  Man, it was cool.  Massively big and the color of sherbet, this guy was losing no time clocking out of my side of the world.  I watched it drop: going, going, gone over the Estrella Mountains.  A little sliver hovered for a moment before there was no more moon to be seen.  I like to think some surfer in California was treated to the same visuals a few minutes later with their moon dissolving into the Pacific.

There was a sadness when it finally disappeared.  There was a sadness, and yet.  And yet a crazy notion that the moon would shoot back up over the horizon with a showman’s “Ta-da!”  Like Neo in the Matrix jump program, it would drop through the horizon and BOING back up before landing back on the earth with a satisfying smack.  Why would this crazy thought enter my mind?

Maybe because it’s Holy Week.  Maybe because it’s the week where we remember that crazy comes true, that the God who created the moon and set supermoons in motion has power over everything, including death.

The cycle of birth, life, and death seems as immutable as the moon’s journey around planet earth and planet earth’s journey around the sun.  It seemed like a sure thing to the disciples even though Jesus had told them he would come back.  After Good Friday, they locked themselves in a room, windows closed, and I imagine the air was thick with the stench of nervous sweat.  They had witnessed their teacher being tortured to death, placed in a tomb, wrapped up in bandages with the spices of the deceased pressed into his flesh.  There’s no coming back from that.  There’s no upward trajectory, only decay and eventual worm food.

And yet.  And yet Christ appeared to the disciples in that stinky hideaway.  The scriptures don’t record a “Ta-da!” but I like to think that’s what he said. Can you imagine their faces when he asked for a piece of broiled fish and then ate it?  He who was supposed to be worm food was eating fish! 

So I guess that’s the reason I expect a crazy moon to come back.  I have seen miracles, and now I expect to see them all the time.