Clouds

I awoke this morning and the view from the front window was inviting. The light was just beginning to disperse the night's darkness. From my vantage point I could see the trees and fields on Lazy Mountain. There was not a breath of breeze to flutter the leaves on the trees. And so I sat down with my coffee and Bible to enjoy the stillness of a beautiful morning.

I have been reading in the book of Isaiah and had just read 44:22, "I have blotted out, like a thick cloud, your transgressions, and like a cloud, your sins. Return to Me, for I have redeemed you."  Amazingly, I looked up and everything was blanketed  in a thick cloud.  I could no longer see the mountain, the buildings on this campus, or even the lilac tree right in our yard.  Everything was covered over. It created a new reality from my perspective.  The mountain no longer even existed, in this enshrouded new world.

This is exactly what God claims that He will do for us.  If we do things His way, as the Creator Who exists, is relational and personal, and the One Who exists in three as Father, Jesus, and His Spirit. He does for us what the cloud did in this environment. We can be in relationship with this Creator. We can be His children because He is the cloud maker. He is the One that covers us in this cloud. The sins in our lives can be completely covered so that they change our life as radically as the cloud changed the scene here on the mountain.  He takes away the sin, and the shame.

It was a beautiful thing to see as I was reading today.  The power of God's cloud to blot out our sin and shame.  Wow.