behold he comes riding on the clouds

Last night, after watching vinnie run 5 miles for the Jim Dunn memorial, my husband and I went to dinner at Texas roadhouse, for a blooming onion and wings?!? (What can we say we are not runners...we just fit in so much better with the sticky finger belly over the table types) Oh well?!??

We had a nice reiteration of the whole visit and then he said your brother is a saint...

I thought he said he was 'insane' and I kind of laughed thinking maybe because he wants to buy a condo downtown?!? or because he is taking mom in!?!? But I couldn't grasp it, and I had to ask what do you mean?!?

and he said "your brother is a saint"

And I agreed, I knew exactly what he meant!

I told my husband I had even told him how much I admired him

for the respect he expresses towards our mom.

My brother and I were driving around Tuesday doing 'errands'...dry cleaning, pharmacy, Michael's..."his store!"

and he took these photographs of the clouds (cause I was driving)

That night I had a supervisory meeting for our Stephen Ministry and weezie read from Oswald Chambers' My Utmost for His Highest'.

I haven't read it in probably two years, since I began the Word Among Us. I used to read it every day...for years.......

But it was about the clouds, I remembered it...as she read, it's one that stuck with me...

In the bible clouds are always associated with God. Clouds are the sorrows, sufferings, or providential circumstances, within or without our personal lives, which actually seem to contradict the sovereignty of God. Yet it is through these very clouds that the Spirit of God is teaching us how to walk by faith. If there were never any clouds in our lives, we would have no faith. "The clouds are the dust of His feet" (Nahum 1:3) They are a sign that God is there. What a revelation it is to know that sorrow, bereavement, and suffering are actually the clouds that come along with god! God cannot come near us without clouds-He does not come in clear-shining brightness.

It is not true to say that God wants to teach us something in our trials. Through every cloud He brings our way, He wants us to unlearn something. His purpose in using the cloud is to simplify our beliefs until our relationship with Him is exactly like that of a child- a relationship simply between God and our own souls, and where other people are but shadows. Until other people become shadows to us, clouds and darkness will be ours every once in a while. Is our relationship with God becoming more simple that it has ever been?

There is a connection between the strange providential circumstances allowed by God and what we know of Him, and we have to learn to interpret the mysteries of life in the light of our knowledge of God. Until we can come face to face with the deepest, darkest fact of life without damaging our view of God's character, we do not yet know Him.

"...they were fearful as they entered the cloud" (Luke 9:34). Is there anyone except Jesus in your cloud? If so, it will only get darker until you get to the place where there is "no one anymore, but only Jesus..." (Mark 9:8 also 2-7)

I'm not sure how my brother and God and the clouds actually relate here?!?

...but it's something about the presence of God, Christ in our midst...

there is always glory.

We always say "there's God" when we see the sun's rays beaming through the clouds.

I do not know what is going to transpire with my mom's house and stuff and move...

but my brother is witness and trusted son right now...on the front line!

He is the shining light of God's glory...evidence of God working, and the presence of a loving Christ here among us...with my mom...

I know some hard things are going to have to be gone thru for some if not all of these decisions she's started to have to make to come to fruition.

There will be darkness...but I know it is all for good...

and I thank God for my little brother.