The Pregnant Sky.

I’ve been looking at the sky a lot lately. Actually, it’s not just lately; this is a regular practice of mine. On my drive to work, I can’t help but focus on the sun rising. On recess duty during the school year, I push open the second set of double doors and immediately scan the horizon to see what the sky has to say. When I bring the recycling bin out to the curb in the evening, I inspect the night sky to take in the bats, moon, stars, and planets.

Last week I was on a camping trip. I spent all but a few of my waking hours outside and therefore sky-gazed to my heart’s content. During one such moment, I noticed thunderheads. The clouds were pregnant with moisture, billowing upwards, nearly erupting out of themselves, readying to break open in rain. Yet at the same time, sunshine still peeked out from behind and through gaps in these threatening giants. I knew from past experience I soon should take shelter, but I was mesmerized by the sight.

How can something simultaneously bear so much danger and delight?

Life right now is a pregnant sky. When I read the news headlines, witness the plants and flowers shriveling for lack of rain, listen to friends’ experiences with sorrow and tragedy, consider what the future may hold, pack up memories in boxes out of my childhood home–the thunderheads loom large. I want to run for cover, hide, and wait out the storms. At the same time, when I stand in the top of the lodge surrounded by young staff singing to God, when I listen at sessions’ ends to abundant stories of how the staff experience Jesus each week, when I laugh with a friend over funny perimenopausal symptoms, when I am startled at the picnic table while entering receipts into our budget by the tiger swallowtail fluttering by–the sunshine peeks out; I want to bask in its hope and brightness.

Both are present. Both are true.

“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” -Psalm 19:1 (NRSV)

I thought about this verse with the sunshine-wrapped thunderclouds. If this verse is true, which I believe it is, then both aspects speak to the work of God’s hands. Both elements reveal facets of His glory. What God does, does not often make me comfortable. But who God is, comforts me.

So I will keep gazing at Him and His heavens.