Thoughts about Clouds

When the kids were growing up we had a trampoline in the back yard. From time to time the girls and I would go outside and jump and play on it. When we stopped we would lay on it and star at the sky. We would always be fascinated by the clouds and the different forms they took. We made a game of identifying different shapes, like whales, dogs, people’s faces, and sheep, lots and lots of sheep! There was something mesmerising about the clouds.

Each morning before I head off for my daily walk to the gym I look up at the clouds. Depending on what I see there in the sky I choose my clothing for the walk. There are many kinds of clouds in the sky and even a few different colours. There was fog the other day that was thick, there are low clouds that seem like you could almost touch them, there are thunder clouds that produce a huge mountain of cloud, and there are wispy clouds and then there are the patchy fluffy clouds, the kind that kids always seem to draw on their pictures. At times they shine like gold as the rising sun reflects off of them, sometimes orange, gray, blackish, and at times such a bright white they are hard to look at. Of course there are those rare occasions when they are not even there.

Clouds are usually if not always mentioned in the weather reports. In fact a multi-billion dollar industry has arisen devoted to a large degree to the study of reading and interpreting cloud formation and tracking their movements. All this so that it can be reported several times a day to an interested and even demanding public. Recently we witnessed a rare cloud occurrence that left parts of the North Shore City in ruins. The tornado that ripped through Albany was many things. It was ferocious because one person was killed by it, it was fascinating as there were several video recordings of the clouds as they twisted into funnel shape and touched down, it was forceful as we witnessed several buildings damaged, cars overturned and written off and the rubbish and debris scattered everywhere, and it was frightening as it produced a mixture of wonder and fear depending mostly on how close one was to it. It brought thunder, lightning, rain and in some places flooding, it brought winds that gusted at times up to 200 kilometers per hour, strong enough to uproot massive trees like they were matchsticks. But at the end of the day it was the clouds that did all this.

We can all know one thing for sure. Clouds never stay the same. They are constantly changing, always shifting, moving, thickening and thinning, speeding up and slowing down, sometimes delightful other times dreadful. Life is often like the clouds. Uncertain, difficult to read, even the wisest among us can get it wrong. Life is always changing, shifting, shaking. Life is sometimes awesome and sometimes fearful. At one point Jesus mentioned that people are better at reading the clouds than they are at reading life. In this case the light of life was standing right in front of them and they missed it, misunderstood him and maligned him. They were better at reading the clouds than reading Jesus. At one point the clouds made him disappear while his disciples watched, gazing up into the clouds until it was announced to them that the same way they had seen him disappear was the same way he would reappear. Not long before this event Jesus had announced that at a certain time in history he will return and at that time people, “will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory”. Even the most significant event of human history will include the clouds.