Clouds and Sun

Cloudy days remove my strength. Though the rain replenishes the earth and the soil, the grey skies sap me dry. However, when the sun breaks through and the clouds are pierced with light, I feel my strength return, at least this is what it feels like sometimes.  

Life comes in stages, though we aren’t acting on a stage.

Our hearts, like the sky above, sometimes are grey with weariness. We need the light to breakthrough to feel alive again. 

Life stages come quickly, often without a warning. Age rolls over us like a giant wheel headed downhill. We are thinned out by this process like dough under a pin roller. We cry to God for mercy and sometimes in His wisdom He lets us be rolled, stretched almost until we break. 

The skies seem dark and we feel alone. The grey clouds press against us like a hand until we are flat. The grey and the stages—or maybe these are just the stages of greying? Hollywood and social media paint aging and maturing as a whimsical and not-scary process. However, real life hurts as much as it enlivens. The tradeoff for existing is the barbs of time and relationships that pierce us. The heart is wounded and still we get rolled on, flat and bleeding at once.

We also wound others, sometimes those closest to us. Our hearts are wounded yet wound. We are deep pools where love and joy, anger and malice both swim. They mix like oil on water yet are still present in the well together forever spinning. Much like life itself, joy is mixed with bitterness, the triumphs at odds with the defeats that exist simultaneously. Yet redemption is always in the background working itself out. God’s grace holds us together when all seems lost. 

His grace is like a downpour that is always raining on us. Unlike the grey skies, this rain does nurture us; it has light mixed in with the drops. If we hold out our hands, it will pour into them. If we cup our hands, we can drink in the grace. Of course, in practical terms this means making space for God in the mundane, the everyday. It is making holy the ordinary by opening our palms to Him. This brings elements to our hearts that we cannot bring ourselves, the endless conflict between the flesh and the Spirit is temporarily paused while we nurture ourselves on God’s breast. The skies break open and the sunlight comes out. 

We now see we have always been in His arms. This is no longer a trite phrase told to us by other well-meaning pilgrims; it becomes a truth we internalize as we relate to the Eternal One.  O wretched man that I am, who will save me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.