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from Cossondra One day when I was elementary school age, my grandmother and I went for a short drive, and I lay in the backseat of her car. We were not far from home, so I was uninterested in our immediate surroundings. I had seen the fields, houses, and woods many times. Rather, I was gazing out the window, beyond the treetops, at the sky. The clouds, instead of being fluffy, stretched across the sky like lace ribbons. They were long and flat, and specks of blue peeked through the thinness of the white. I told Grandmama that the clouds looked funny. "Oh, yes," she said. "They keep sendin' those men up there, and they are messin' with everything." I wasn't sure exactly what she meant then, and I don't hold it against her now. For a woman born shortly after the turn of the 20th century, she was pretty modernized in the 1970s, so we can excuse her disdain for space exploration. I will admit to looking more searchingly after that, though, expecting to see some little men disordering the clouds. I still love looking at the clouds, the sky. When everything in the atmosphere works together, it is often beautiful. We have talked about sundogs before, for example, and how the sun and ice crystals in clouds work together to make rainbowed art. Likewise, sunrises and sunsets can be full of color, but if there are no clouds, the skyscape isn't as dazzling as it could be. The colors don't have as much variation in an untextured sky. And, lightning can be beautiful, but it is magnificent when it flashes behind a cloud in the darkness, setting the cloud alight in the black sky. One of the most delightful things about clouds is that they can become what observers make them. When was the last time you looked up at the clouds? Do you do it less than you did as a child? Look up and see what you find: a battleship, a heart, the Mona Lisa? Would someone else be able to see it, or is it all in your perception? A cloud shifts into a thousand shapes as the wind pushes it around the sky, through the ribbons of sunlight, past the lightning bolts. People have been looking at clouds as long as there have been people and clouds. I suppose they have always noticed their shapes, colors, and shiftings. Clouds are something that everyone on earth has access to, no matter who we are or what else we don't have. Perhaps because of this, clouds appear in literature frequently. Ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes used clouds as a chorus of foolish people, Shakespeare's Hamlet used them to frustrate Polonius, and poets used them to represent beauty, loneliness, and opportunities. There are many cloud references in the Bible. In Nahum 1:3, the prophet says that the clouds are the dust of our Lord's feet. That is a striking visual, God standing in the sky looking at his creation. In Job 37, Elihu describes how the Lord "loads the clouds with moisture; he scatters his lightning through them. At his direction, they swirl around over the face of the whole earth to do whatever he commands them. He brings the clouds to punish men, or to water his earth and show his love" 11-13. That is powerful, too! But I suggest that one of the mightiest cloud passages is Revelation 14:14: Then I looked, and behold, a white cloud, and sitting on the cloud was one like a son of man, having a golden crown on His head and a sharp sickle in His hand. That is a shape that will not shift. The clouds that bear up Jesus at His return may partner with lightning, but nothing will outshine the glory of the Son of God as He comes to harvest the faithful from the earth. Even having seen all manner of special effects in movies, I still don't think we can imagine the sight this will be. Some will be terrified, and some will be joyous. But we will all see the same thing. There will be no debate about whether or not it is Jesus in the sky. Instead, we will see Him commanding the clouds unlike any man ever could do.
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