Clouds

I have been up for hours with a poor, ill, wee one. Seviah is trying to survive one of those nasty, 24 hour tummy bugs. Icky stuff. But, as I was sitting here, watching the day come into being, I was struck by something. Yesterday morning, we awoke to a foot of snow, and it was still coming down, and it was 34 degrees and the snow was melting off the roof. This morning, it is clear as a bell and it is 12 degrees. This fascinates me. Clouds fascinate me. They have since I was a very wee child. My two youngest and I watched the movie UP night before last and one of my favorite parts is when Carl and Ellie are lay and watch the clouds together, both in happiness and in sorrow. Someone once attributed my love for hiking as an attempt to get nearer to the clouds. This is likely true. I know that I have received some of my most powerful answers, insights, strengths and feelings of love and peace, while staring at the clouds. So, since I was up anyway, I went on a cloud search in the scriptures. WHOA!! It was so cool. God and clouds are intimately linked. He uses clouds all the time. I just love this. He is my insulator from my sin and my anguish just as clouds are the insulators for the earth. From the very early days of the earth, the cloud was His vehicle of choice. He set the rainbow "in the cloud"(1). He went before the children of Israel as they fled Egypt "in a pillar of a cloud"(2). He appeared to Moses "in the midst of a cloud"(3). When His people needed protection, He "spread a cloud on them for a covering"(4). In times of retribution, He "rideth upon a swift cloud"(5). Those who are translated to the heavens are "caught up together in the cloud" and we are to "comfort one another with these words"(6). When He returns to the earth "he cometh with cloud"(7). I could go on and on, there are a large number of other references to God and clouds in the scriptures. But I want to wrap up this comforting epiphany with the scripture that just enfolded me in His arms and brought me to tears, the good kind. In Isaiah 44:22 it states, "I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins: return unto me; for I have redeemed thee." What an image that speaks to me in a very real and personal way. It is scriptures like these that make me feel that He is my God, my Redeemer, my Father, my Brother, my SAVIOR! 1) Genesis 9:13 2) Exodus 13:21/Numbers 14:14 3) Exodus 16:10/24:18 4) Psalms 105:39 5) Isaiah 19:1 6) 1 Thessalonians 4:17-18 7) Revelations 1:7