I reread this book with our community group and we just finished. It was encouraging to see the group be refreshed, challenged, and refocused with the Christ exalting message that I had been blessed with when I first read the book.
Some books just come into your hands at the right season of your life and say exactly what needs to be said. In "Uneclipsing the Son", Rick Holland doesn't say anything that hasn't been already said, nor are the truths that he expounds truths that shouldn't be heard and dwelt upon in any season of a Christ lover's life. Yet food is all the more tasty when one is especially hungry for it. I came upon this feast at a time of spiritual hunger. It wasn't until I started reading this book however that I realized just how hungry I really was.
Holland uses the metaphor of a solar eclipse to expose the fact that many of us (all of us at some point) who follow Christ often live in the "spiritual gloom" created when lesser bodies drift between us and the brilliance of Christ's light. We take our eyes off our Savior King and we become accustomed to the hollow shadow of a loveless faith.
The simple message of this book echoes Hebrews 12 "...let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame,and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart."
I commend it to all who feel stuck in the bog of spiritual apathy and the weariness of living outside of a clear vision of Christ's brilliance.
"There is a grave danger of mistaking the shadowland of the eclipsed Son of God for the broad daylight that the redeemed were redeemed to enjoy, thinking all along that this treadmill of Christian engagements, polite Christian conversations, and good Christian behavior is the abundant life Jesus came to earth to deliver and declare."
"We must learn to stare at the Son of God such that we are blinded to all the allurements of the world!"