Hunter's Moon 2013

I love weather. I grew up in New England, where the old adage attributed to Mark Twain goes like this: "If you don't like the weather, wait a minute." I've been through hurricanes, the Ice Storm of 1998, The Storm of the Century, The Blizzard of '78, snow, Nor-easters, winds, humidity, heat, you name it. A friend from Nova Scotia said once she was hanging bathing suits on the clothes line outside, and it began to flurry. Her toddler said, "Mommy, is summer over?"



When you grow up in New England with weather so severe and changeable, you become almost part of the weather. Not in the same way fishermen and farmers do, but we did live by the ocean and were on the water a lot. We always 'kept a weather eye'. Weather was always the most important backdrop to any daily activity. That is because you could die. In New England during winter, you always had a trunk stocked with chains for your tires, a blanket, anti-freeze, a shovel and ice scraper, extra food, and a weather radio. If you slid off the road and got stuck in a snowbank, you could freeze before you were found and rescued. Even though we are living in a millennium of new technology and largely insulated from the elements except for the times I mentioned above, this generation and only a few prior to mine have lived exposed to it and submitted to it. For 7,000 years, men have lived by the weather, the elements, and the stars and planets.

"Cold feet" by EPrata

Anyway, I read the weather website and I was involved in this article and I became so excited when I saw God the Creator in it. The article opens this way,



"It’s that time again, time for another full moon. The one that falls directly after the Harvest Moon (which was Sept. 19) is called the Hunter’s Moon, and it happens tonight, Oct. 18. "



Hunter's Moon. I hadn't heard of it. I'd heard of Harvest Moon, Blue Moon, Blood Moon, but not Hunter's Moon. The article continues:



"The Hunter’s Moon isn’t just any full moon. Like with other moons this time of year, its path — called an ecliptic — is shallow. That means for several nights in a row, the moon sits farther north on the horizon, according to EarthSky. “It’s this northward movement of the moon along the eastern horizon at moonrise,” EarthSky writes, “that gives the Hunter’s Moon its magic. "



"Typically this time of year, the moon rises about 50 minutes later each day. Say it appeared in the night sky at 7:00 p.m. today, tomorrow it would show up around 7:50 p.m. For several days around the Hunter’s Moon, however, it only rises 30 to 35 minutes later. (In that same example, it would emerge at 7:00 p.m. tonight, 7:30 p.m. the next.)"



"Why does this matter? Well, if you lived at a time when you needed the moonlight to harvest and hunt by, it clearly did. “The light of moon allowed farmers to harvest their crops later into the night,” O’Leary said of the September Harvest Moon. By the Hunter’s Moon in October, “it’s time to go hunting for Thanksgiving and the fall. The prey is easier to find. Rather than the moon being up in the sky an hour or two after sunset, it’s up in the sky sooner…. There’s less of a period of darkness. "

Source

"And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day." (Genesis 1:14-19)



Isn't God so precise! He not only set the planets in the sky for lights to guide us, but just when the cycle of light diminishes yet the harvest needs to be done, He extends the light so that they can gather the crops, hunt, and provide food for themselves before winter. He thinks of everything. He is so wonderful and glorious. The more I read the word and contemplate His attributes, the more I am in awe and love Him for Himself.