A Walk Through The Clouds

Psalm 36:5 -- "Your faithfulness reaches to the clouds."

Standing at the front door of my mother-in-law's house I could see the sun light up little droplets of water on flowers that grow around an old tree stump at the front of the house. I could stick my arm out from under the front porch and feel the warmth of the sun make the hairs on my arm stand up. Two houses down the street it was raining.

Not just a sprinkle in the sunshine, a hard pelting rain that blurred the lines and made steam come up off the black top. I love the moments in our lives when the things we take for granted and consider normal take us a bit by surprise. For a moment I wanted to take off running down the street and jump in and out of the rain.

Standing on the balcony of the dorm in the Philippines my fellow dormies and I watched a storm roll in over the bustling city of Manila. Located in the hills, we were able to to look out over the clouds and watch the heat lightning bounce through them like huge dancing fireflies. The wind might kiss us on the cheeks now and again, but the air up in the hills was still and quiet - without the electric buzz of the storm below. Somehow, that calm was comforting and I'll never forget standing there on a balmy tropical night.

The thing is, stormy weather is often very localized. It's never storming everywhere on this great blue marble of ours. In fact, in a airplane high above - it's possible to miss a storm all-together by flying over it.

Psalm 36:5 tells us that God's faithfulness reaches to the clouds. It's so vast that while we might be forced to turn into the wind and ride out the weather for a time, God is sturdy, strong and stable - in the calm, ready to be our anchor. He is there before the winds whip up and the rains pour down. He is there to keep our sails from tossing us like toys. Steady as she goes - God's faithfulness will be there long after we brave the high, shifting seas and the storm has passed us by. Who better to lead us through than our Faithful God who can see beyond our troubled waters? If we keep our compass on our only True North, we will make it through the storms that seem to take us over so completely.

My sweet friend Cathy likes to tell me "this too shall pass. It might pass like a kidney stone, but it WILL pass." And she's right.

It's never storming everywhere. And it never rains all the time.