THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL

I am no longer the pastor of Hall Memorial CME Church in Montgomery, Alabama.

Hall Memorial is the first church Sheila and I joined as a family.  Pastor Freddie Carger baptized both of our children and me.  Hall Memorial is where Sheila and I went from new Christians to mature/ maturing Christians.  It’s where I first publicly accepted my call to preach.  But I’m not the pastor there anymore. 

My bishop unexpectedly transferred me to pastor Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama.  The transfer took place according to church law and the Methodist-Wesleyan tradition with all of the appropriates forms, certificates, and protocols.  It was nothing unusual for the church.  For the church.

But for me and my family it was like….. it was like…. it was like that movie, “The Day the Earth Stood Still.”

“The Day the Earth Stood Still” was a 2008 remake of a 1951 sci-fi movie about an alien spacecraft landing on Earth.  There were a lot of special effects and dramatic moments in the movie, but the thing is---- the Earth never actually stood still.

In the movie, everyone’s attention was drawn to the spacecraft and all the immediate activity that swirled around it, so for them it SEEMED LIKE nothing else was happening. 

They were wrong. 

Children still played.  People still went to work.  Babies were born.  Funerals were held.  Life went on.

In Joshua chapter 10, the Bible records a day when the Earth stood still.   

Joshua was leading the people of Israel in battle against the Amorites, and the Israelites were winning.  But around noon, Joshua--- tactical genius that he was---- realized that a conclusive victory would take more hours than they had left in the day.    Joshua also realized that if he won the battle without totally finishing off the Amorites before sunset, they would regroup and pose a continuing threat to Israelite national interests.

What Joshua needed was more time, so he gave the most audacious order in the history of audacious military orders. 

He said in the sight of Israel: “Sun, stand still over Gibeon; and Moon, in the Valley of Aijalon.” (Joshua 10: 12)

And the sun stopped.  The sun and the moon stopped tracking across the sky until Israel had totally eliminated the Amorite threat.

Some read that and say, “Wow!” Others read that and say, “Yeaaah, right.”

See, Joshua and Jasher, the scribe who originally recorded the event ( Joshua 10:13), didn’t know that the sun and moon don’t actually move across the sky.  The Earth rotates in space and the moon orbits around our planet.  It’s the earth and our sky that move.*  So for Joshua’s order to be carried out, the Earth would have had to stand still.

There are swarms of websites that will quite scientifically and sarcastically explain how that couldn’t have happened.  If the Earth stopped rotating, our atmosphere would dissolve into space, the oceans would pour over the land, super volcanoes would erupt all over the planet, the electromagnetic shield would wink out and cosmic radiation would burn away whatever life hadn’t already smashed into the nearest mountain at 1,000 miles per hour. 

The Bible says that a miracle happened all those centuries ago on the battlefield of Gibeon and the Valley of Aijalon.  So a miracle did happen----- but the Earth didn’t actually stand still.

God created what scientists and sci-fientists call a “time dilation field.”  God wrapped the battle field in a bubble of exotic particles or special relativity or something and made time pass at one rate for Joshua and the other combatants while it passed normally for everyone else.    Scientist say this would require a massive amount of mass and or energy, but since God created mass and energy, I’m thinking He could pull it off.

To the warriors, looking up beyond that time dilation field, the sun and moon weren’t moving at all.  But for everybody else, life was going on as usual, at the same pace.   Fields were being plowed.  Weddings were being arranged.  Somebody in Canaan was giving birth.  Somebody else was performing a burial ceremony.  Life was going on.

When God spectacularly or surprisingly makes a major move in our lives it occupies so much of our attention that we feel like….. like…. like the whole Earth stands still. 

It doesn’t.   All around our crisis, or miracle, or transfer to a new pastoral post, life continues as usual.  While we are mourning, rejoicing, contemplating, second-guessing, and otherwise obsessing over this one thing;  EVERYTHING else is happening.

Someone new will take my place as pastor of Hall Memorial CME Church. He/she will love that congregation as much as I have and serve them (hopefully even better than I did). 

I will be the “new pastor” at Miles Chapel, who  love outgoing pastor, Rev. Dr. Larry Batie.  I will love them and serve them and they will emerge from their time dilation field and realize that their world has not stopped spinning either.

I am comforted by the truth: That while we have been momentarily frozen in our respective bubbles, God has been moving the universe along and positioning new opportunities, responsibilities, and blessings that we have yet to see.

I’m excited about that.  About the future, which--- as the name “future” implies—is waiting on us to unfreeze from the present and keep it moving.

I hope I’ll see you in church on Sunday at Miles Chapel CME Church, 5220 Myron Massey Boulevard, Fairfield AL 35064.    We’ll be the ones praising God and moving forward.

*I do realize that the moon, the sun, the solar system, and the galaxy are all in motion as well, rotating and revolving in their respective orbits.  So, yeah, we all technically move around each other. 

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama;  executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO);  and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

You can help support this ministry with a donation to Miles Chapel CME Church.

Support by check or money order may be mailed to  

Miles Chapel CME Church

5220 Myron Massey Boulevard

 Fairfield, AL 35064

A beautiful, much more poetic blog called “Time Dilation” was written by   on Makala Doulos.  You can find it at  http://blog.ps1611.org/2014/02/time-dilation.html