“Then God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night. They will serve as signs for seasons and for days and years. They will be lights in the expanse of the sky to provide light on the earth.” And it was so.” Gen. 1:14-15 (ESV)

I had just started a new devotional study on the book of Genesis on Monday. The next day, while I was out completing errands and going about my day, I looked up and the moon was showing itself in the midday sky between the winter branches of a tree. I had just read the passage above the day before, and made notes of how God set the world in order down to the moon, sun and stars for the express purpose of giving us nights and days and seasons. The passage was brought back to my memory in the moment. I also remembered a seminary instructor once explaining that sometimes scriptures are not just either/or but sometimes they are both/and. The paradox of seeing the moon in the brilliance of the sunlit day was a moment of realizing the truth of the both/and.

It is true that the sun gives us our days and the moon is related to our nights. But also take notice of the text above that says the purpose of the sun and moon is also “for seasons and days and years”. In order for that to happen and if we can remember our basic astronomy classes, it takes twenty-eight days for the moon to completely rotate around the earth. In those twenty-eight days, sometimes we don’t even see the moon (new moon) and at other times we only see parts of the moon even if it happens in the middle of the day. God didn’t say that the moon would only shine at night, but that the sun would be brighter than the moon and rule over the day, while the moon would rule over the night and it was good (v. 16-19). For the greater picture of seasons, days and years to play out, God has a timing to each of these elements that relies on the rotation and the tilt of the earth around the sun and the moon around the earth that sometimes causes the moon to be in the sky at the same time that the sun is shining but it is never brighter than the sun. What struck me in the moment was both the sun and the moon were shining, and, due to the tilt of the earth, in this hemisphere we are in the depths of winter where everything is stripped bare and the air is notably cooler.

The sight of this helped me to realize that while there are some things that are clearly either one way or another, God also allows us to experience things in tandem, often at the same time. On this particular day, I was recovering from a meeting that went off the deep end the night before, sorting through what had happened and how to resolve some of the issues. I had taken a drive through the country to another town to visit someone in the hospital. The route my Google maps took me on was different than ones I had taken in the past. It was like the AI that runs the applications knew I needed to decompress and regain my peace and composure. So when I stepped out of the car and crossed the hospital parking lot, I saw the scene above and I was reminded that days can be both chaotic and peaceful, happy and sad, rough and easy and the same God who placed the sun and the moon is over all of it.

More importantly the reality of this both/and paradigm shows me that no matter what the situation, no matter how out of place it might seem, there is always a bigger picture, where God is guiding my days, nights, seasons and years to fulfill His purpose. Sometimes, we demand the simplicity of clear boundaries of either this or that when in fact, it seems to me the majority of our lives are a blurred line of both/and. When I can take a moment to step back from my expectations and behold the beauty of life with all it’s intricate ins and outs, then I can appreciate how sometimes the half moon shines in the midday sunlight and it is good.