Clouds and Thick Darkness

Those dark and scary moments you encounter in life, well maybe they point us to God.

Clouds and thick darkness are all around him; righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne. (Psalm 97:2)

In this Psalm, the Psalmist depicts the reign of God as something that should be considered joyful. The Psalmist actually concludes in verse 1 that any place there is life should be celebrating God’s reign. It is a beautiful picture that is depicted so far.  However, we’re not going to look at that verse, I just want that verse to be there as a reference to the verse we are looking at today, which begins with, “clouds and thick darkness are all around him…” In fact, many of our waking days are cloudy and filled with darkness and it is the reality of that we live in. Turn on the TV or open up the newspaper and you can be sure that if God is in this world, active and in charge as He is reigning as the Psalmist writes in verse 1, then there is undoubtedly clouds and thick darkness around him. The Psalmist knew the reality of the world that we witness as followers of Jesus– there always seems to be clouds and thick darkness. We encounter it all the time. This imagery is bold and dark, but how does it jive with the God of love reigning on His throne? Especially since the clouds and darkness are associated with God’s righteousness and justice as the foundation of the throne which He sits?

Perhaps we miss God’s righteousness and justice from His reign because we’ve become so infatuated with what we cannot see through the dark and scary moments we’ve encountered in life. When the clouds come rolling into our lives and the darkness is choking the life out of us, we question where God is working when, in fact, we should understand that God is working through it all whether we see it or not. Jesus saves us through what in inexplicably a dark moment in history when we convict an innocent man to die on a tree and find salvation in it. Why wouldn’t we be witnesses to God’s reign through the clouds and thick darkness pervading in life then?