“This was the cloudiest January in Minnesota since 1963,” our pastor said at the start of his sermon.
And my recurring word, clouds, drifted in again. I thought of that 1980s jaunt in the station wagon to see Mount Rushmore. Clouds obscured the presidential faces the day we visited, but they couldn’t block my memories of the trip any more than the hard things in life could blur my dreams.
I shot a look at Husband, not a big cumulonimbus guy, but a meteorology minor (to go with his Aeronautical Science degree back in the day) nonetheless. Even his education sparked thoughts for me of the condensed vapors in the atmosphere.
Clouds were everywhere. So, what other lessons loomed?
I focused on the message again. Pastor talked about clouds over our country in more ways than the physical ones that hovered over our first month of 2021. And if we lived inside of them, depression and despair would turn our views grey and defeat us.
“But because of His great love, we are not consumed,” he said. So, live above the clouds, he urged us; a change of altitude would shift everything.
But even the sunniest among us feel caught in the dismal sometimes—and dampened by our circumstances.
“Turn off the TV, the news,” he said, answering my desire for the practical. “And listen to the voice of the Air Traffic Controller who knows the way through the storm.”
Hope pierced my thoughts like a spear of light through fog, and more faith followed—because it always does when we glimpse our once hidden path again.
Refreshed, I dimmed the temporal things, tuned into the eternal, and a podcast spoke into my week, telling of more clouds. But these were different.
Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us run with endurance the race set before us.
The clouds covering Mount Rushmore that day in 1983? An obstruction.
The clouds over the news with its threatening forecasts? A distraction.
The clouds of the faithful—gone before us—who finished life’s marathon well? A motivation. And I want to be like them.
Faith moves us. Hope accompanies us. Intention fuels us.
And the clouds, once dark, clear again.
*Names in this blog have been changed to protect my family and friends in the neighborhood, and in a nod of appreciation to the beloved Swedish author Maj Lindman, I’ve renamed my three blondies Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka.