“If your eye is generous, your whole being is full of light!” Jesus

I don’t know about you, but I have never enjoyed a clear blue sky. I far prefer my skies to have some “drama” in the form of clouds. Of course, I don’t enjoy the pouring rain either, unless I am safe inside, but a few clouds, strategically placed, or even a really interesting layer of cloud with some sun showing through, or at the extreme, a storm sky coming on fast…that is my ideal sky. I never tire of the interplay of light and shadow that is the weather. And I have never convinced myself that a clear blue sky day is weather at all. I think of it, whether summer or winter, whether the earth is green under or white, pretty much as the absence of weather.

Which I think, overall, is a pretty good attitude to have. Things being what they are, in this world (at least where I live) it seems we have have more cloudy days than blue skies…and at least as many outright stormy days as completely clear. And that is just talking about the external weather. If we turn the conversation toward the spiritual, then, even more so (again, at least from where I live) you have to expect some clouds and even maybe a storm in any given five-day-outlook. It is just the way the world is. It is just the way we are in the world.

The trick is in knowing that God is in the clouds as much as in the sun…that God is in the storms as much as in the sunny days. More! At least that is the way I see it. In the clouds and storms we see God at work…whether we are talking about the external or the interior weather. In the clouds and storms God is continuously remaking and renewing creation. The clouds and storms are God’s blessing made real…God’s work in us and in the world made visible in ways we can not miss. Or at least that is what I am thinking right now. I will have to try to remember that the next time I get caught out in a downpour, or blown away by wind too strong, or swept up in a tornado that seems to never end. Should any such weather come my way…I will have to try to remember that I really do like clouds.