The other day I had a few minutes before a meeting so I sat on a bench and looked up into the azure sky and watched very fluffy white clouds. There were two of them. One slowly was moving into the other as if pushed by an invisible hand.
We know that "The heavens declare the glory of God." And just for a minute I saw the incredible beauty of what God had made.
Beyond what we can see, there is a Kingdom of Heaven which can only be seen through eyes of faith. When we look at the physical world in all its beauty we can be in awe of what we do not understand about the Creator of it all.
We cannot grasp the unseen through the seen because we have to have our spiritual eyes opened to see the Kingdom of Heaven. Much like a little kitten whose eyes are closed for a time after being born cannot see the real world until its eyes open, we cannot see what God has revealed in the spiritual world until we have our eyes of faith opened. Faith comes from the hearing of the Word of God (the Bible).
Jesus was born as a helpless baby. He was crucified, died, and was resurrected. During his final days on earth Jesus told the disciples that He would come again in clouds of glory. When He left them He was taken up to heaven in a cloud and disappeared from their sight.
Can you imagine those big, tough guys all looking up into heaven until that cloud slowly disappeared. They waited and looked, but Jesus was gone.
They walked away with a promise that He would come again "in clouds of glory." I don't think that any of them for the rest of their lives could ever look at a cloud in exactly the same way.
I am sure many of us have had the experience of flying through clouds. There is a kind of holy hush as the plane goes through these clouds because we are aware that we are in a different place from planet earth. We can break through from gloom into sunshine on the top of the clouds,or we can encounter unexpected turbulance...if the clouds are storm clouds.
How often do I miss God's message in a cloud, a tree, a mountain, a sunrise or a sunset?
Clouds are being moved today. Are you looking up?
Funny that God would have us thinking about clouds in the same week. Your view was from a bench, mine was from above the clouds in an airplane going from Sarasota, FL to Atlanta, GA. The cloud formations are often spectacular from above in that part of the world. The cloud sculptures were everywhere that day, some rising 20-25 ft. in the air, also against the azure sky. I too was thinking about God's creativity in it all. Then my thoughts turned to Jesus--not about his ascension but about his descending in the clouds in the last days and how every eye will see him. We experienced turbulence as we descended through the clouds. When Jesus returns, and every eye sees him--I wonder if people will be looking at the heavens because of the turbulence that his appearance will bring? We know there will great tribulations on the earth in that time. Below the clouds, the ceiling looked grey and foreboding. The thought that I wrote in my journal at the time was which side of the clouds am I looking at and choosing to dwell in? I can never look at the grey skies in the same way again, for above them God is doing the spectacular.
ReplyDeleteJan