God of Clouds

As kids, we used to look up into the sky and wonder about the clouds. How they made their shapes. What kinds they were. Where they came from. 

The prophet Zechariah answers that question: God makes the clouds (10:1). 

When I read that verse recently, what actually popped into my mind is that God gathers the waters. 

Water is such a hard thing to gather. Have you ever spilled any? Have you ever spent time on your hands and knees, pushing water around with a towel or a cloth of some kind because it just refuses to soak in and come up? Have you ever tried to squeegee it into a bucket? You put water into a cup, and as soon as you move, it starts sloshing around trying to get out. 

Water is hard to contain. 

And yet, God gathers the waters. 

He gathers the rain drops. And the rivers. And the little creeks. And the oceans. He gathers the drip from the kitchen faucet and the stuff that goes down the toilet and into the sewer. He gathers what's sitting stagnant in the gutters and what's flowing freely over the water mill. He even gathers your tears. 

That's what really struck me about it. All of the kinds of water there is in the world, and God simply gathers it all and makes the clouds. Clouds that give us shade on a sunny day. Clouds that give us rain on a parched land. Clouds that form themselves into amusing shapes so that we can lie on our backs and stare up at them and dream a little, using our imaginations to think of something more than the troubles of this world. 

It's a beautiful metaphor for the rest of our lives. 

God gathers our lives, our stories. Our hurts and our aches. Our victories and our triumphs. Our illness and our healing. Our struggle and our success. Our brokenness and the little bits that are coming back together. God takes all the little pieces of us - from the rain drops to the oceans - and makes something beautiful. 

Something refreshing. 

Something nourishing. 

Something sheltering. 

Something life-giving. 

And if we just take some time to rest, to pause, to stop for a second and look up into the heavens, we'll see it. And maybe we'll take a minute to ponder what it looks like, to marvel at its shape, to laugh a little or even rejoice at the glory of our God...

...and what He can do when He gathers the waters.