Clouds Above a Hammock in January by Sarah Burkhardt

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It is not uncommon to witness a cloudy day such as this Sunday in January. Today, though, it happens to be 42 degrees. And with talk of a winter storm on the way, I decide that even though it's a little cold, it is probably the last opportunity I may have to lie in a hammock for probably a few months. I scan the campus to see if anyone else thought of the same thing. Apparently not. Maybe it’s a bad idea, but I am learning to stop caring so much if anyone else is doing the same thing as I.

And so I put the atlas suspension ropes on the trees, line up the hammock, and as I set a warm blanket in the hammock and stuff on top of my blanket, I start to think about clouds. I think of my post-grad friends and college friends, all dealing with their own challenges, and how easy it is to feel weighed down by emotional and psychological clouds that are all too real. I think of the cloud of depression that surrounds many and one that has surrounded me at times. It is so easy to lose hope in this world, so I soak in the sunlight that is peeking through the clouds.

I remember the words a friend’s mom shared yesterday, of how she had spent two weeks meditating on different verses in Psalm 139 throughout the year, and this one, verse 11, was a particular challenge: “If I say, 'Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night.” I think the psalmist is describing a huge dark-as-night cloud him. Meditating on this verse for two weeks would only bring to mind all the ways my own dark clouds cover me. 

But the words of the next verse completely change everything: “even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you.” What we see as a cloud, God only sees as light. To him, there is no cloud. God’s perspective is so different from ours. I cannot explain why we go through some of the trials we do. As Ann Voskamp put it, “Who knows why the Storyteller allows heartbreak, but the answer must be important enough, because the Storyteller allows His heart to break too.” 

God doesn’t always take away our clouds, but he is with us and allows the light to shine through. In fact, he is so much bigger than our clouds that our darkness is light to him. What are the clouds in our lives, the darkness that covers us? Are we giving our clouds to God? We serve a great God, who wants to hear about our clouds, and then help us see the light around us. Also, remember other clouds that surrounded you and the light he let light shine through. Let those times give you hope and renew your faith in what he can do.

Forecast: Dark Clouds with Some Sun by Pat Cirrincione

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I debated whether to write about the year that just ended, but then felt that if I shared my pain, my faith and joy, it might resonate with some of you. In the process, I thought it might help me to heal and ease the moments of depression that have settled on me like ominous dark clouds throughout the past year.

A few days before 2016 came to a close, our daughter-in-law’s dad lost his fight with lung cancer. He was a kind man who loved his family and us. The loss was hard to deal with, particularly since he had just retired and had talked about the in-laws traveling together when his wife retired in 2018. We had much to look forward to which never came to pass.

In January, we lost two dear friends. We knew one of them had been fighting a battle with congestive heart failure for some time, and his heart finally just gave out. The other friend had beat breast cancer, and then it came back with a vengeance. Within days she was taken from us. That was just the beginning of a year that had us visiting hospitals, going to funeral homes and using up boxes and boxes of Kleenex.

All in all, we lost thirty-two friends and acquaintances. One of them was my best friend from first grade, right around my birthday in March. I was devastated at her wake and funeral. I had visited her just before she came home from the hospital. She had been home for a month, and was doing fine. Then she and her family went to a dinner party. At some point during the evening, she excused herself to use the women’s restroom and never came back. Eventually, someone went  to check on her and found her on the floor, barely holding on to her life. She died of a blood clot in the ambulance ride to the hospital. Gone was the joy of singing “Happy Birthday” to each other year to year--something we had done since we were five years old. Gone were the Super Bowl Sunday festivities, and the fun we had planning the crazy menus each year. Gone were the chat-filled phone calls. She was just gone.

If that wasn’t bad enough, a friend for more than fourteen years suddenly stopped speaking to me. She won’t even look at me. I don’t have a clue to what I did to have her act this way to me. You might wonder why I don’t just ask her, but how can I when she turns her face whenever she sees me? I don’t know which is worse, losing someone to death or losing someone who is still alive but dead to you none the less. It just breaks my heart.

The year ended with a letter from a friend from Iowa. She is dying from an awful form of breast cancer. She calls us her angels for keeping her spirits uplifted throughout the ordeal she has gone through. Her letter ended with these words: “Do something special as you may not be able to do it again.”

So, what have I learned through this year of heartache and pain? I have learned to lean on the Lord in all things. He gave us a respite in October when we watched our oldest son marry the woman of his dreams in a fairy tale wedding. The Lord gave us days of joy and laughter and love. He gave us moments to cherish. Why share all this? Because I want you to know that you are never alone. Grief is a shared experience. Losing those we love allows us to see just how short our lives really are. It should also show us how to forgive and love one another now, not later.

One of our Lord’s most important commandment to us is “to love one another as I have loved you.” Yes, love brings pain and hurt, and sometimes misery, but that pain will be much worse if you let someone leave you and never tell them what you were thinking or how you felt.

I received comfort from many of you this year as my family and I dealt with the many friends and acquaintances we lost. Thank you for allowing me to enter your hearts to share my pain. Your prayers have sustained us. God’s love continues to lift our spirits as we pour out our grief to him when it hits us at the oddest moments, at the oddest times and in the strangest places. Grief doesn’t have a time table. It overwhelms you when you least expect it. A song, a movie, a hymn, a person in a store who looks just like the person you just lost, will start the tears a flowing. Weep. Jesus wept when his friend Lazarus died. He wept because he loved.

My father-in-law used to say: “Don’t treat me badly while I am living, and then come to my funeral and cry like you’ve just lost your best friend. Treat me kindly and with love, despite all my foibles, while I am alive. Then when I die you will have peace that the time our Lord gave us on this earth with each other was spent in joy, love and kindness, and you will have no regrets once I am gone.” My father-in-law was an immigrant from another country, but his words were filled with the common sense of a man that loved and enjoyed the people around him.

Don’t have regrets. Don’t live with that kind of pain. Learn to love as our Lord commanded us, and enjoy the time he has given us on this earth with each other. There will be dark clouds—rainy storm clouds, and then there will be rays of sunshine that stream down to brighten our sadness. It’s God’s rays of hope, coming to you from the highest heavens and filled with his mighty love.

Within the Clouds by John Maust

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One thing I miss about Miami is the clouds. In the 10 years our family lived in Florida, I came to love the cottony, billowing clouds that towered above the ocean or that fled across the sky on warm evenings, bathed in blues and purples after the sunset. The light fluffy pillows seemed so low you could almost touch them.

Yet I also encountered a different kind of cloud in our time there—a problem in my work that caused much inner turmoil, tension and confusion.

For one of the few times in my life, I had trouble sleeping.  In a continuous loop, my mind replayed all the scenarios and issues of the situation.  Everything about it seemed wrong and unfair.  Why was God allowing this to happen?  What was he going to do about it?  What was he trying to tell me?

In the darkened bedroom, I would lie awake at nights listening to worship music, trying to pray, waiting for sleep to come. Then one night a particular song caught my attention. The lyrics described a person struggling to find God in a hard situation, finally to realize that “sometimes He comes in the clouds.  Sometimes His face cannot be found. Sometimes the sky is dark and gray.”

The Steven Curtis Chapman song seemed to capture my feelings completely, and then offered hope:  “Sometimes our faith can only grow, when we can’t see, so sometimes He comes in the clouds.”

Hmm . . . I’d never thought of my work-related problem as a “cloud” through which God could speak and increase my faith. 

Soon after I began reading the classic devotional, My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers. One of the first entries that I read began, “In the Bible clouds are always associated with God. Clouds are the sorrows, sufferings or providential circumstances, within or without our personal lives, which actually seem to contradict the sovereignty of God. Yet it is through these very clouds that the Spirit of God is teaching us how to walk by faith.”

Clouds again! Dark experiences of our lives could actually be an opportunity for God to work in power in our lives, if only we will allow hm.

Out of curiosity, I took out a concordance and began referencing the different Scripture passages where the word, cloud, appeared.

Passages in Exodus (13:21-22, 19:16, 24:15, 34:5, 40:34-35) and the New Testament (particularly the Transfiguration story) showed how God sometimes manifested his presence in a cloud and in fact spoke from within the cloud.  

While my problem at work had become a cloud obscuring my vision, I realized that God was indeed speaking to me from within it—through his Word, through the counsel of friends, through the very need to stop and try to understand what he was saying through this situation.

Just as a blind person develops a more acute sense of hearing, the good thing about a cloud is that it sharpens our sense of spiritual listening.

Looking back, I see how God used the problem at work to draw me closer to him and ultimately to lead me into an exciting new area of ministry in which I’ve served for more than 20 years.  

And I do still miss those gorgeous clouds on a warm evening in Miami, especially on sub-zero days in wintry Wheaton.