I was a freshman in college leaving for a road trip. The call must have been from my mom. I don’t remember. All I know is that my youth group’s intern from the summer before–coincidentally engaged to another intern–had been in a fatal car accident.
She’d been driving to try on her wedding dress.
That weekend, I stumbled around as if in a fog. Didn’t this seem particularly cruel of God? Something Hallmark wouldn’t even put in a movie, because it was just too tragic?
What I didn’t come away with: Answers to the whys accumulating in my quiet anger and disbelief. Who are You?
But what I haven’t forgotten was a thought flitting through my head in the darkness on the return trip back to campus. Maybe what you don’t know, can’t figure out, are the reasons I’m above you. The reasons I’m worthy of worship.
Partly Cloudy
I thought of this after a small group meeting last week. We sat around, legs tucked beneath, a handful of us women as the guys collected on the porch. The hostess’ Persian cat was hopping to each of our laps when she asked, How would you describe the season God has you in right now?
(Is it a sign of a good question when you don’t know how to answer?)
Strangely, the picture that came to me was one of a giant bank of clouds. Maybe it’s because I live at 8,500 feet. The clouds are literally low enough to touch sometimes, though they don’t always do what I expect.
But I think it’s actually how I see God in the clouds everywhere in the Bible. They’re clustered around Sinai, flickering with lightning; they’re a swirling pillar guiding the Israelites by day. They’re at the transfiguration, where Peter’s so confused he starts saying goofy things (that, I identify with). And God’s described as arriving on clouds. They’re a symbol, to me at least, of secrecy. Above-ness. A conciliatory veil. Clouds and thick darkness are all around him; righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne.
And I suppose in the age of air travel, I know what ancient Israelites might not have: These are not heaps of cotton to be held in my palms pulled into a useful shape. They both block the light and reflect it, a vaporous, silvery mass of billions of droplets risen from the air I breathe.
Rain or Shine
Like that weekend, this year God’s revealed himself to be different than I thought. At times, my questions pile up faster than I slowly metabolize their answers.
So yes, he feels shrouded in mystery and otherness, ungraspable despite the appearance of tangibility. At times, I do sense a foreboding; Aslan is not a tame lion. And yet there’s the pillar of him in front of me, leading me to places I’d have never gone otherwise.
Maybe it’s why I can bristle when he’s packaged just a bit too neatly, his methods and motives explained tidily with a bow on top. My God-in-the-clouds doesn’t seem to fit well in any box I’ve tried to guide him into, as if he were really a mound of whipped cream. He is profoundly knowable and unknowable. He resists my leash, my 8-lb. brain’s understanding and oh-so-sweeping logic: The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever (Deuteronomy 29:29).
It’s possible you’ve found him rather obfuscating, too (sorry–had to use that word); a lofty-yet-not-aloof enigma. I guess it’s not as intimate of a metaphor as I would like. Perhaps I would rather have God-as-handcrafted-baby-blanket or God-as-puppy or God-as-down-pillow-with-satin-case. Again, I find he resists this way I try to press his vapor into my own more comforting shapes. Do you know about the layers of the thick clouds, the wonders of one perfect in knowledge…? (Job 37:16).
As for now, I still see through a glass darkly; I still walk not by sight, but rather edging my toes into the fog that is faith, walking more slowly. I am still some poor-man’s Job, overturning an enemy’s assumption that I would only follow what I can see with Windex-clarity.
Of course he is still intimate, still unspeakably good, infinitely more than I. But in my quest for intimacy, I hope I never make him reducible.
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