Is there a reason you look at the sky like that?

Elbows resting on the ‘sill, the window glass against your nose

Your breathing calms, a grounded light shines deep

Within clouds’ simple prose

The softest down, a purple grey looks like a cloud formed mountain

And tinged with pink of old pastels, the color calls the clouds to bow

And silent words their presence tells

Of the holy joy that bound them.

Something more than clouds of gold I stare at in the sunset

I stare into a “one day” when every longing the clouds hint at

Will be coming on them

I hear, I hope, my heart calls come.

And that, homesick hope, my reason.

Hello, happy Sunday dear readers.

A few months ago, I remember driving home, with a beautiful sunset out the front window and the news of a recent school shooting doing battle in my heart.

“How can a sky like that exist in a world so horrible?”

I’ve heard that we must wrestle with the questions, and wrestle I do.

I’ve probably recited Psalm 19 two dozen times. Its always been one of my favorite passages that I have memorized. But the first verse, about the heavens declaring the glory of God, didn’t come to my mind until a while after that evening in the car.

“The heavens are telling of the glory of God and their expanse is declaring the work of His hands” (Psalm 19:1).

How can the sky look so beautiful, hanging above a world so wrong? It is the glory and goodness of God that the skies tell, the truth that sin is not what we were made for and that our God shines pure and true and perfect still.

This is the story that beauty tells (Sarah Clarkson, This Beautiful Truth).

The glory of the sunset had receded, leaving the sky light, soft and clear. Gentle. Lovely. All those words befitting to a sky after the sun has set and before the light has gone with it. Through a leafy window of branches I gazed at a momentary, flitting glimpse of eternity.

I remember moments when I feared in the depths of my weary heart that God wasn’t true. Not like He said He was, in the perfection of goodness and love. There are still moments when I struggle to breathe past the pounding of the noisy world and reconcile the truth of goodness with all the sin that clouds my eyes.

But there are also other moments. Moments when the trees are almost silhouettes against a sky of Texas colors. Moments when the birds glide across an Illinois span of dusky purple and daring peach. Moments when a whippoorwill sings out a song that matches the song hidden within my own heart, a song that I can’t quite get my voice around, one that bursts forth from me in smiles and shouted psalms and tears and words and hugs.

And there are some moments when the two experiences collide and I am left with a bittersweet longing for home.

In Madeline L’Engle’s A Wrinkle In Time, the children of the tale experience a whole host of creatures singing out a song of praise to God. And Meg feels that this, in fact, was what they were made to do.

It’s a beautiful picture. I wish I felt like that more. But whether I feel it or not doesn’t change its truth. For oh, He is worthy.

Do you feel the world is broken?

We do.

Do you feel the shadows deepen?

We do.

But do you know that all the dark won’t stop the light from coming through?

We do.

Is He Worthy, Andrew Peterson

The heaves declare the glory of God. And the Father has also shown forth His glory in His Son, Jesus Christ. The One who is high and holy, but who took on flesh, and then gave that flesh for the life of the world.

Sin is indeed devastatingly wrong. And you and I, each of us have added to that, each of us are plagued with the sin that broke the world. But God.

“But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)” ~ Ephesians 2:4-5.

And every moment that His children follow Him, we proclaim His goodness, His redemption, His life. Come quickly, Lord Jesus.

And every now and again, stare long and hard at the clouds, they have a story to tell.