Beautiful sky-gray

I’ve a lover of the color blue, especially that of the sky on a sunny day. But I don’t mind the “gray” of rain clouds when they’re part of the normal cycle of seasons. This sky-scape on a recent trip brought to mind a passage in Isaiah 55, one you may remember for its clarion call to the spiritually thirsty: “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters.”  This, of course, looks to Christ, the Living Water. But there’s another well-known section in the middle of that chapter. The passage may seem long, but it’s rich:

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord.

As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,

So is my word that goes out from my mouth; It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. (Isaiah 55:8-11)

Years ago I was encouraged to memorize this set of verses as a reminder that learning the mind of God (which includes making the necessary spiritual changes) needs to include getting scripture inside my heart.

There’s a Bill and Gloria Gaither song that goes along with this. It’s called “God gave the Song,” and in the middle of the singing, a narrator comes in with a list of things (like armies) that could not quiet God’s Song in Jesus Christ. God’s Word will never, never be nullified but achieve His purposes. I claim that as I pray for difficult people in my life. And even when I see no changes in them, I know He’s changing me more into the character of Christ.

Back to those threatening gray skies. In the back of our pickup, we had a wooden dresser to deliver to our daughter, and wondered if a cloudburst was ahead and we’d need to stop and put a tarp over it. No way could we stop that “precip delivery” on which farmers depended for their crops! Similarly, we cannot stop the spiritual “storms” that come into our lives. As uncomfortable as they are, as much as they drive us to our knees, they’re part of God’s way of growing us spiritually.

Maybe there’s new slogan here:

See the gray, stop and pray!