Clouds!

Clouds! Who'd ever be grateful for them? I am this morning. After umpteen consecutive days of 100+ temps, what a wonderful relief to emerge to an overcast sky. A thick band of clouds to the north, high and gray. 

Were it not true in our spiritual lives?  The shadow of death, the cover of challenge, the overcast of inactivity…why do we struggle so to see these as "relief?"  I know the answer to 'why clouds' on earth. They provide relief, shade, cool, and rain. They are the catalysts for something else, though they themselves have a momentary purpose. And that's just it…clouds, though thick, dark, and ominous sometimes, are momentary.

  

"Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. " (2 Corinthians 4:16–18, NIV84)

We fix our eyes not on the clouds, but on what is beyond the clouds.

But why clouds in life?

"God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. 'For in him we live and move and have our being…' " (Acts 17:27–28, NIV84)