Clouds

It’s overcast and rainy today; the sky is gray.

But last week under a clear sky and the setting sun, I watched magnificent clouds for half an hour. They curled and curved under the flow of wind and shifted through red, violet and purple shades.

Nature’s poetry in motion.

I remember last year flying through a lightening storm over the Appalachians, as electricity forked from one cloud to another, lighting up the sky in an exhilarating display of power and surprise.



Clouds are magnificent to watch. And highly functional. At any time, about half the planet is covered by cloud, shading us from scorching sun and helping to insulate the earth. Clouds transport water vapor from sea to land. They affect environments and climate everywhere.

And what an astonishing feat of physics! Moisture, heat, pressure, electricity and crystal formation combine to float tons of water for miles through thin air, condense them to fall as mist or monsoon, as snow or hail onto the earth below. There’s chemistry in there too, making nephrology a very complex science.

Photo Courtesy of Axel Rouovin WikiMedia Commons

Job’s life was also cloudy and complex; his suffering made no sense to him. As he sat in the sweltering sun trying to decipher the puzzle of his circumstances, he pointed his friends to the clouds above them as symbols of paradox.

He wraps up the waters in his clouds,

yet the clouds do not burst under their weight.

He covers the face of the full moon, spreading his clouds over it.

Like clouds, God was glorious but distant. Clouds were Exhibit A of the inscrutable mystery of God’s purposes.

These are but the outer fringe of his works;

how faint the whisper we hear of him!

Who then can understand the thunder of his power?"

Job 26:8-9, 14

Like Job we stand in wonder at this phenomenon of nature in the skies. Despite state-of-the-art technical instruments and doctorates on meteorology, the complexity of cloud behaviour still out-strips our capacity to understand the skies, let alone master them.

But as Rabbi Abraham Heschel observed it is a sense of awe, wonder and amazement that make our souls aware of God.

Notice the clouds around you or above you today.  Thank God for their beauty and benefits . . . and let them whisper to you the about Creator’s love and power and purpose.