I have always loved clouds. As a boy, I remember wishing I could scale the fluffy cliffs of the mighty Cumulus cloud, though I didn’t know its name at the time. Funny how I never really considered what the surface of the cloud would actually feel like beneath my feet. Cool and wet but solid enough to support me at some point, I assumed. And what child has not lain in the grass on a summer day and picked out faces, dragons, and giants in the puffy mounds sliding silently across the sky? They’ve always seemed somewhat miraculous to me.
How often the mysteries of childhood are dispelled with the passage of time. We grow up and come to understand what seemed unknowable as children. Not so with clouds. Recently, I was shocked to discover that the average weight of a Cumulus cloud is 1.1 million pounds! Yep, you read that correctly, 1.1 million pounds. Yet we never think twice that these colossal columns are heavily hovering just above our heads. How did I not learn this until late in my adult life? Far from dispelling the wonder of my youth, I’m more amazed now than ever.
As I considered this new fact, I came across a verse in Job I hadn’t recalled reading before – “Do you know how the clouds are balanced, those wondrous works of Him who is perfect in knowledge?” (Job 37:16) This was just one of several things that Elihu says concerning clouds, in his glorious declaration of God’s majesty (Job 32- 37) Then a flood of other verses regarding clouds filled my mind. The children of Israel led by a cloud, the cloud of God’s temple glory, Christ being taken up and coming again in them, being caught up together with Him in the clouds, and many, many more. They truly are “wondrous works” and the biblical writers seem captivated with them.
Since that time I’ve wanted to write a post about clouds, but I’ve struggled to decide what clouds are actually “saying” about God. Then it dawned on me, that just as God is a kaleidoscope of glorious attributes, which shine differently in different circumstances, so too does His creation testify. As the light of the sun divides into a splendid array of colors as it passes through a prism, so His works display various aspects of His glory at different times. Their voice is unified in glorifying Him but varied in their expression. Because our God is infinite in wonder, His works will never come to the end in their attempt to express Him.
Being relieved of trying to determine one, monolithic testimony of the clouds, I relaxed and settled on just one – clouds display God’s faithfulness. From the shade they provide on a sweltering day, to the quiet armada, sailing overhead, carrying and delivering water far inland, to the heat they retain through the cold winter days, clouds are servants of God’s varied faithfulness, freely sent upon the just and the unjust.
But as with all things God does, there is more than just utility to clouds; there is extravagant, expressive artistry in each vaporous form. Clouds are the sky’s emotions. The facial expression of the heavens. Think of it; without the clouds, the blue canvas of sky above us would seem barren, void of feeling. Oh, I know we all love a blue sky, but I think it’s more the delight of contrast than the thing itself. Consider only ever seeing a cold blue expanse above us, with no variation, no fire from the fading sunlight, cast upon the sides of wispy clouds. Clouds create a feeling in the air. The sullen Stratus clouds that lie like a moist blanket over the land. The exultant Cumulus clouds that rise like towering mountains. The heavy Cumulonimbus clouds, with their threatening stabs of lightning. And like emotions they are constantly changing. Their shape is never the same. Yet there’s a constancy in their diversity.
Today there is a solid gray ceiling outside. No shape nor form, just a veiling canopy, hanging low above the houses. Even so, the muted sunlight still makes sight possible. But it’s a sad sun, and it will set all the sooner for the cloud’s presence. And even as I consider the sadness of the gray sky, I remember that God still upholds these clouds too. I don’t think the shapes we saw as children were coincidental, just as I don’t think the feelings clouds stir within us are merely projections we place upon them. I think God knew how they would make us feel, I think he intended it. And in this intention, we understand that He is faithful even during the sad times.
How like the clouds we are, shifting and uncertain. Yet like the clouds He upholds us each moment. We hang between the heavens and the earth, miraculously balanced by his mighty hand. And like the clouds that “swirl about, being turned by His guidance, that they may do whatever He commands them” (Job 37:12), we too are guided by His hand. Ponder the clouds today. And let your meditation on them remind you of His great faithfulness to you. The saints above, that great cloud of witnesses, would say the same – He is faithful!
