I love a picnic. On Labor Day we sat out on a patio having a picnic. I
noticed how big of a panorama of the sky was in front of us. There were no trees or building, nothing near us, to block part of the sky before us. I was
struck by how wide and high the sky looked.
As the meal progressed, clouds began to roll in. Big
cumulo-nimbus thunderheads. There was a little bit of lightning off in the
distance. At one point we commented on how it smelled like rain. It was a feeling.
High above, over our heads were these towering thunderheads.
One website says, “A good sized
cumulonimbus cloud, or thunderhead, might be ten kilometers tall (six miles),
with a base ten kilometers in diameter.”[1]
The tops of them radiant white in the
late afternoon sun. The lower parts of them various shades of gray where the
sun could not strike them. Then below them, obviously much lower in altitude,
came in low, whispy but dense rain clouds. Dark. Almost black.
“Becca, look,” said Charlie. The white on the edges of the highest clouds was intense.
She began to snap pictures.
“It’s going to rain, really hard,” I said.
But it didn’t. A black cloud, quite low, rolled right over
our heads, carrying literally tons of water. But it didn’t rain.
“He binds up the
waters in his thick clouds,
and the cloud is not rent under them…”[2]
said Job in the oldest book of the Bible.
“Look over here,” said Charlie. Another breathtaking
panorama behind us. “But,” he said, “that is past us. It’s over there that is
coming our way.”
A small, private airplane flew over, well below the
billowing, roiling thunderheads. I said, “No one intentionally flies through
one of those.”
I was looking straight up. The shining white edge of the
topmost clouds moving across the lower black ones, forming black silhouettes of
the edges of the ominous rain clouds. What a sight! “Can any one understand the spreading of the clouds, the thunderings of his
pavilion?”[3]
Charlie interrupted my thoughts and pointed off into the
distance, “That's the worst place.” It was an extremely black, low patch. Just
by a quick scan of the sky, Charlie could point out the area where the storm
would be greatest. “Who has put wisdom in the clouds, or given understanding to the mists?”[4] I guess
we take that for granted. But the skies really do give us vital information
about the weather, just by looking at them. There’s a pattern to it. A plan.
We began to
retreat into the air-conditioned house, realizing God had put on a show for us.
An everyday sight, yet so majestic when you stop to ponder it. “He it is who makes the clouds rise at the end of the
earth, who makes lightnings for the rain and brings forth the wind from his
storehouses.”[5]
A few brave souls
went back outside. Moments later they came running in through the sliding
doors, “It started, then stopped, then
started, then stopped… and then it came down like a curtain of water!” That
was some serious rain. Little Kenzie said, "Wet!"
Like I say, I love a picnic. But a picnic and a show... that's the best. Thank you Lord.
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