On a recent flight between Glasgow and London we descended through clouds so thick that I couldn’t see the ends of the plane’s wings. Bumping from the smooth clear blue skies above  I began to think about the Old Testment figure, Moses. On the mountaintop he had a theophany with God–a God moment, some would say. But when he came down from the mountain he saw a people who had given up hope and worshiped a golden calf! (See Exodus 32)

In life there are moments when we rise above life’s clouds and are given a glimpse of grace, a vision, of who we are called to be as well as Who God is. We cannot stay above the clouds too long. The air is to thin. So we live belong the clouds in the land of the golden calf. 

But we never really forget the mountaintop, and what it is like to be above the clouds. People who take Jesus seriously are called to never lose sight of the blue sky of God’s Kingdom. They are to pray and work for that Kingdom to come here on earth.

At the eulogy of his brother, Robert, the late United States Senator Edward Kenedy ended his remarks with these words: Some men see things as they are and say why? I dream things that never were and say why not?  May we who take Jesus seriously ask the same question.

Lord God, let me never be satisfied with the way things are in this world of too much pain and sorrow. Give me a vision of Your blue sky above the clouds of hopeless and despair. Make me a master craftsman in the building of Your Kingdom.  Amen.