Rainy Day Reading

Hello Dear Churchwomen,

(Your name is coming soon.) 

Today it is pouring rain. It’s a good day to stay inside and read. I know that many of you consider these inside days good opportunities to clean out the pantry, but give me a blanket and a book every time. It is a well-proven fact in this house that the empty cereal boxes will wait as long as you have. Even longer than the dishes in the sink. 

In case you can’t tolerate long periods of reading--or books of any kind--here’s a nice thought for spring from Annie Dillard. I printed it really big and added some pictures, which is what my husband, the ultimate nonreader, has told me to do. 

Look at an overwhelming ball of buzzing bees, or a turtle under ice breathing through its pumping cloaca. Look at the fruit of the Osage orange tree, big as a grapefruit, green, convoluted as any human brain ... Look, in short, at practically anything--the coot’s feet, the mantis’s face, a banana, the human ear--and see that not only did the creator create everything, but that he is apt to create anything. He’ll stop at nothing.

If you're in need of some creative power in your life I hope this encourages you. It did me. He hasn't forgotten. He is not sleeping. He will stop at nothing to create what we've been hanging on for. Whether we know what it is or not. 

Clouds from the Bridge

Genesis 1:6
Then God said, "Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters." And God made the expanse, and separated the waters which were below the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse; and it was so. And God called the expanse heaven.

Psalm 89:5
The heavens will praise Thy wonders, O Lord; Thy faithfulness also in the assembly of the holy ones. For who in the skies is comparable to the Lord? Who among the sons of the mighty is like the Lord?

Today when I was driving back from the church the clouds hung in a stunning arrangement in the sky above the bridge. There were so many of varied beauty that a question appeared "Would God paint a picture just for me to see?" Yes. I paid attention and looked longer.
Cumulus, stratus, cumulonimbus. The names I learned as a student came easily, but didn’t carry with them any definitions. These were just the kind of clouds you imagine sitting on in heaven but don’t often see. Big, puffy, white cotton-ball clouds, the kind that usually wear gray and carry rain, today came down close to the water. Their visit was not work related. They were on a social call.

The center seemed a large mass of hundreds of clouds some stripy, some fat, some lacy, some fully formed. Then I realized that it wasn’t one large mass, but layers and layers with holes here and there, through which I could see the ones behind and the sky higher up.

The sky was a blue just right for clouds like these, and though I can’t locate the sun’s position in my memory I know light shone down in wide, round channels. Where a cloud sat, blocking, light traced the edges. Below the water flashed and twinkled. Tiny mirrors of light, winking and popping up in circles, played like a school of fish who know the pelicans are not diving now.
Did God create these clouds for me? He created clouds in Genesis, and they must have been important because it was only the second day. Human form was not needed until the sixth, after the fish and the pelicans. Still, God is as much about set design as he is about the plot. So what purpose do these clouds perform this day? At that moment, and in that moment, there was no quick answer the that and other questions beginning to form. All I could do is stare at the picture splashed across the sky.

After a while, though, it dawned on me that, if light is glory in a created form, these clouds both exposed and withheld God’s glory. A cloud suspended in the midst of the light seemed formed by it. And in the center where the light couldn’t penetrate the cloud was darker, heavier. Similarly, I am darker in the places where I refuse entrance to His light and become heavy with holding it in. When it penetrates my shape is changed, and beauty results despite my tendency to bring rain. But that's the Sunday school answer--the one that appears after time to process.

The truth is the heavens praise His wonders. They don’t explain them. They don’t make practicable applications. They praise. They don’t praise how easy God is to read. They praise how hard it is to ever comprehend Him. They sing for joy that we don’t know what He means. No one bound to the earth can do what He does, or even always say for sure that what they see is really Him. We stare at the heavens and we wonder. And it is a beautiful sight.