CLOUDS ARE NOT WHITE
by Kelly Garner
If I told you that clouds are not white, you might look at me like I was crazy. You would probably say, “Yes, they are! Look at those white clouds against that blue sky.” The problem is, you are not looking deep enough! The background of this story is that my mother was a visual artist, not to mention a Godly woman of the faith. She, my grandmother and I took oil painting lessons together 40 years ago. We had an art teacher and would drag in our canvases to her house to work on our paintings. My mother would say to me many times, “You realize, don’t you, that clouds are not white! You must begin with a dark gray color on the canvas, then add lighter shades as layers until the final layer is white.” She would point out to me that if you look at clouds in the sky, there is an underside to the cloud that is gray in color and only the front side is white.
I think our lives are very much like this. We were born into sin, struggle and even go through many situations that we wished we had handled differently. That is our “gray,” the underside. Then, as we grow and mature in our faith, we begin to add the lighter shades just as we did on those oil canvases. Eventually, I think we get to that bright purest white on the outer layer, but that might or might not happen on this earth.
God is drawing us unto himself, painting us in like a cloud from dark to lite on a canvas. Renewing our inner man until we are a bright white, just like those clouds we see up against the blue sky. You can still see the underside of those clouds, how they got there with a gray outline, but the outer man has become purest white.
Psalm 51:2-10 speaks to our transformation from the darkness of sin until we are whiter than snow. When you are outside on a partly cloudy day, notice the dark underside of those beautiful fluffy white clouds. Remember that to paint those clouds on a canvas, we had to begin with a dark underside and work on them layer by layer until the outer side was purest white.
Dear Jesus, may we allow you to continue to work on us until we are purest white like those fluffy little clouds up against that bright blue sky on that canvas, fluffy white clouds that first began as gray.
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