Cloudy Days

Have you ever read this verse and looked up to the sky to witness a gorgeous sunset, the sky bursting with color and flames thrown out in every direction? My kids like to say it looks like cotton candy; I think of it more as a watercolor that someone such as Monet would covet to paint. It's easy to worship the glory of God at such a scene. But what about today, as I read this verse, hopefully looking up towards the heavens and all there is to witness is a nondescript, grey expanse. St. Louis winters are difficult for many around here, me included. The monochromatic trees, grass, skies and streets can easily make me bow my head, slouch my shoulders and try to keep busy instead of searching elsewhere for encouragement and beauty.

So how do I read this verse on blah days like today and move my heart to worship? Is there something even in the grey lifeless skies that could possibly reflect the glory of our Creator?

I don't know about your experience, but my life has an awful lot of grey days. Depression can stretch on, seemingly endless as I do my best most days to get through. Seasons of life where my heart is stuck in the chill of boredom or fear, and the weather seemingly arrests any kind of growth. Even the storms of life feel better somehow than the inert grey.

So when the skies don't seem to reflect his glory, turn with me to His word and let's see what hope we might find there.

The next few lines of Psalm 19 say that the skies never stop proclaiming his glory. He never stops revealing himself to the earth. "The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul;" the created order of things in creation, including the law laid out in Scripture, "makes wise the simple, rejoices the heart, enlightens the eyes." As I meditate on these things, the Spirit leads me to remember the cloudy scene of darkness on Golgotha. Day turned into night. The Christ's torturing and death on that splintery cross. Did even the skies reflect the glory of the Lord on that day?

Because Christ's death and resurrection on behalf of those who love Him was the most triumphant display of God's glory if ever there was one. It wasn't the sunny kind of glory, the kind that's full of happy, hopeful, smiling, raising my hands up worship. It was the kind of glory that rains down upon the darkness of the earth, the kind that inspires falling to our knees like the centurion did, and we can't help but utter "This surely is the Christ!" Even the sun couldn't shine in that moment, but his glory poured out nonetheless, and the skies reflected it.

My hope is that on cloudy days, we would look up, look up in our depression, our hopelessness, our boredom, our narrow little lives, and remember the skies on That Day. That we could remember Jesus's sacrifice as the curtain split and the thunder rumbled. He didn't leave us alone to suffer - He entered into our suffering and triumphed over it. Let's worship Him remembering that even the grey skies "reflect his handiworks" and remind us of His promise to come back and make all things new.

Rachel