I’m expecting 4 minutes of total eclipse here at my house in less than 3 days. I don’t really know what will come of it. A half million people are said to be travailing to my area to check it out and there are plenty of scare mongers who are telling everyone to stock up on groceries, gasoline and water. Actually, very many Texas counties have declared a state of emergency already in preparation for the event.

It does make sense that there could be really a whole lot of people parked on the side of the road that goes past my house. Full total eclipses are rare and that’s what will be happening here. And folks in these parts can rather easily get pretty free and rowdy so it all just remains to be seen how this will play out.

Meanwhile, the weather forecasters are saying it will be “nip and tuck” as to whether there will be clear skies enough for anyone to be able to view the eclipse. It’s supposed to happen in early afternoon and it’s not certain at all that there will be clear skies to see it. One way or the other, day will be turning to night as the full eclipse passes over here so at least we will be seeing “darkness at noon”.

I’ve thought a lot about what if anything I should write about this event that will be here where I am. Forty years ago, right at this time, I was going through perhaps the greatest “eclipse” of my personal life as my own family fell apart. And, strangely, there was a pop song that was popular right around that time called “Total eclipse of the heart”. It really somehow struck me so deeply what the words of that song said as it summed up what I was going through, so unspeakable and mostly unbearable.

I was going to make a video from my house here, linking this upcoming eclipse to my “eclipse” at this time in 1984. I decided not to do that but instead write something since so very many people in these times are going through their own “eclipses”. The light of their lives suddenly leaves them, their dearest loved one, mate, child or whoever is suddenly just not there and they’re plunged into darkness, just like a total eclipse in the middle of the day.

When that happened to me, I cried every day for 5 months. I woke up in the mornings and was crying in ten seconds. Why am I sharing this? To somehow reach out to anyone, and there are so very many, who are in a personal, mighty “eclipse of the heart”. If that’s not you right now, then perhaps you know of someone who’s life has collapsed, whose dearest loved one has left them, or their family has turned against them and they are suddenly so alone and without light or love in this world that many just give up and die.

I’m so glad I came through that time; it took around 13 months before the vast shadow that was upon my life began to lift. Maybe that’s you just now. Or someone who’s near to you in your life right now. Folks, there is an epidemic of loneliness, despair and spiritual darkness that’s descended on many millions of people around the world in these times.

But eclipses don’t last forever. Mine didn’t. Perhaps a secret for me was that I knew God and His son Jesus. And They are able to deliver us from the lowest hell. It was that faith, that God was bigger than my circumstances, that gave me the grace to just hold on and keep praying through a time like I’d never gone through before.

If it’s you, or someone you love, the secret is to hold on to faith in God. This coming eclipse to my part of the world will pass. We all take that for granted now. And I can tell you personally that if you’re in a total eclipse, a sudden darkness unlike you’ve ever seen before, then hold on. You say you can’t hold on because you don’t know God or Jesus? Then it really is a great time to get acquainted with them.

God is in control of the world and He can bring you through and out of whatever you’re going through, just the way He will bring us through this darkness that’s soon coming to my neck of the woods in central Texas. Hold on to the Lord, He can do what no other can do.

And I might add, back when I was going through my “total eclipse of the heart”, there were a few very dear friends who remained friends with me when it really looked like to most that I would shrivel away and die. But they encouraged me and did what they could to help me through that time. Would to God that all of us would remain steadfast and true friends to those we know who are in a place of darkness at this time. “A friend loves at all times and a brother is born for adversity.” Proverbs 17:17