The Shepherd's Moon

On a clear, crisp spring night , a young shepherd stands watch over his flock. In the stillness of the dark, he contemplates with awe and reverence the majesty, the beauty and the vastness of the starry sky above him.

For a moment he is acutely aware of his smallness, his seemingly insignificance in all of it, but only for a moment. The moon is rising and he recognizes the phase. Only 10 or 11 more days until the new moon and then fourteen more to Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread. He thinks again of Christ's sacrifice for him, of God's forgiveness, of eternal life and of sharing in the inheritance of everything spread before him, both terestrial and celestial. He is overwhelmed with God's love and generosity. His eyes begin to moisten and he's thankful for the darkness.

Whirrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!! He is startled back to the present by the noise from a nearby hill. Two great 'wings that cover' separate to allow a monstrous glass "eye" to peer into the depths of space. Gears whirl and electric motors hum as the giant scope slowly sweeps the heavens searching for yet more data to analyze, classify, catalog and file in huge computers containing astronomical amounts of measurements and movements. Gray-haired scientists in white coats poke scientific calculators and terminal keys to access and compare massive formulas combining facts and theories of things so deep in space that they cannot be seen, but only imagined.

These learned scholars, unlike their ancient Greek and Babylonian counterparts of 700 BC to 600 AD, know there are four ways of measuring a lunar month and two ways of measuring a solar year. They know that days, months and years are not simple or integral fractions of each other, that the points of equinox move approximately one minute of arc per year and that the earth wobbles so much that Polaris, the North Star now, wasn't celestial north only 2,000 years ago, and in 5,000 more years will again relinquish that position. They know that a 19-year time cycle loses one day every 308 years and that this "Metonic cycle" is now more correctly calculated to be 18.61 years.
They know that numerous luni-solar calendars have been devised by many different peoples, that the Jews in Babylon adopted an eight year cycle, then a 19-year cycle, then changed the set of leap years four times, before adapting the present version which, among other errors, loses one day in every 308 years.
They know that the moon is too far away and in the wrong plane to be a satellite of the earth. They know that the moon violates almost every law of satellites known in the universe. It's too big to have been captured by the earth's gravity. Its minerals are nearly identical with the earth, but not exactly, so it was never a part of the earth. The sun's pull on it is greater than the earth's pull so it technically is a satellite of the sun and not of the earth. The moon has inconsistent variations in its movements and the nature of its motions are so complicated that the famous astronomer, Sir Isaac Newton, said that it was the only problem in space which made his head ache.

What about our young shepherd?
Well, the people in the white coats told him that they are professionals and that he shouldn't try to understand these things.

But who's responsible for this situation? "And God saw every thing that he had made and , behold, it was very good." (Gen. 1:31).

The next day, the Observatory lost its government funding and every one was terminated. The people in the white coats went off to universities to teach others the problems of luni-solar calendars and black holes.

And the young shepherd? Well, that night he walked again in the light of God's moon and thought, only 9 or 10 days until the new moon and then 14 more to Passover.

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Copyright M.H. and G.H. 1997. All rights reserved.