“You are the Sky, not the Clouds” *

As we spin and toil in our lives, responding to each and every squeaky wheel that enters our days, months and years, sometimes we forget that our existence is so much more than these small challenges or even the big ones. Our souls are eternal, as eternal as the sky, and these cares and concerns, worries over the illnesses that bring us here, or the tragedies, even, that enter our lives, are like clouds passing through. If we can remember that we are not alone – not alone in that endless sky – that there is a God who loves us and that somehow, in some incomprehensible way, our lives are part of that larger schema of existence.

I sat with a Muslim woman earlier this week whose unborn baby had died.

She said to me, “I don’t dare question God as to why this is happening, but I’m very sad over it anyway.” I just marveled at her faith and her courage to admit her grief and yet accept that God’s ways are not our ways, to enter into that challenging place of not knowing why something is happening and yet accept it at the same time. In that acceptance, even her struggle for acceptance, was her faith and her connection to God in the midst of her suffering.

Together, she and I considered Job’s affirmation: “The lord giveth, the lord taketh away. Praise be to God.”

Sometimes soft billowy, angel-like clouds dance through our lives and sometimes rain clouds turn into monstrous storms that pull down powerlines, blow off roofs, flood valleys, drowning some of us and in the midst of those storms, we forget that we are so much more than the things that happen to us. What are we to make of that? I don’t know exactly, but I do know that Eckhart Tolle is right, we are the sky, not the clouds and we need to somehow draw strength from that awareness and not lose ourselves in the storm clouds.

The challenge for so many of us is to not be so distracted by the storms that rage through our lives so that we can’t hear the soft whisper of God. It is remembering that our real lives are in God and that all that happens to us, even the very tragic things are under God’s control. Since we know that God loves us, somehow we can accept these clouds knowing that eventually the sun will come out to dry up all our tears.

* quote from Eckhart Tolle