Father Sky cannot get his sky canvas colored to his liking today. When I walked Penelope this morning, the sky was overcast with a thick white cloud cover, some clouds colored with blue-gray tints. Counted 12 buzzards circling around. If they want me they better get a couple more dozen friends to help pick me up! Now the clouds look like Father Sky is rolling up his canvas to start over on his sky painting for the afternoon. The sky is covered in gray ripples of clouds, curled up and moving quickly and under the ripples are bright white line clouds resting on a huckleberry horizon. You can see some turquoise sky where the rolls of clouds part.

I used to pick huckleberries with my daddy at the farm. They are beautiful little berries, like tiny blueberries, and make delicious pies. Maybe Father Sky is picking a colander full of huckleberries for Mother Nature. I bet Mother Nature is a good cook and I bet she makes a beautiful pie crust. Last time I made a homemade pie crust was for an apple pie. It was delicious. Got up the next day and Penelope was standing up on the kitchen table, smacking her lips, looking like a child caught in the cookie jar, and had cleaned the pie plate of every morsel of leftover apple pie! She’s a bad dog! Chief was crushed the pie was gone.

Mother Nature tried her best to part the cloud covers for her sunset pageant but just couldn’t get it done. She got out her paint palette and beautifully brushed gold and blue and purple watercolors across the skyline and encouraged the sun to walk down the horizon in a gown of pale grey velvet, and as she turned off the day’s light, Father Sky kissed her goodnight and went to wake the moon and stars, dragging them from their warm cloud covers. Tonight is a new moon which is the opposite of a full moon, that’s interesting. We’re seeing the side of the moon not illuminated by the sun so Mr. Moon is blending in with the night sky tonight. He’s probably napping.

I love clouds. I’ve watched them all day from my perch in the porch swing. I can remember my first air plane ride. I was a sophomore in college going on a trip to England and Scotland. I was as excited thinking about flying through the clouds as I was the trip. I took photos out the window of the plane as we flew through the gray and cotton wisps, the clouds almost like fog in the sky. When we flew through the fluffy cumulus clouds, they looked like you could jump out the window and bounce around on them. I was entranced by the clouds.

The Lord guided the children of Israel through the wilderness with a cloud. Just as clouds are essential for our life, so is faith in the Lord. Clouds have great influence on the Earth’s climate and weather. Sometimes we can’t find God through the storm clouds and sometimes the sky is sunny but our day is cloudy. Clouds can represent change in our lives and in our moods. When some of us see the gray clouds of a overcast day if affects us and makes us gloomy and despondent but we’re joyful when we see the round cumulus clouds, snow white and fluffy in the sunshine, beautiful against the blue sky. God has great influence in our lives and faith in him is essential to living a life well lived.

God is always here with us, hidden from sight behind the clouds in the heavens. We can see God’s reflection in the sun’s rays on the clouds and in the colorful hues of the rainbows. God writes his teachings on nature’s beauty and I think we can find the words of the Bible written on the images of the natural world. Psalm 96:11-12 reads, “Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; let the sea roar, and all that fills it; let the field exult, and everything in it. Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy.” It’s obvious the natural world loves God. He gives them their beauty in the seasons of life through the sun and the rain.

We live in a wondrous world, sometimes sunny, sometimes cloudy, sometimes stormy, but with God’s grace we can weather anything life throws on our path. We not promised our days will always be sunny but when the clouds of storms darken on our path and life’s trials pour down like a rainstorm, putting ourselves in God’s hands through our prayers and thanksgiving will help ease the storm and guide us to the sunshine. I truly believe with faith and God’s grace we can light the darkness in the world.

“If you learn to trust God when the sun is shining, it is easier to trust Him on the day when there are dark and lowering clouds in the sky and you are in one of life’s storms.” — J. Vernon McGee