Spirit in the Clouds

The Cloud That Helps Us See the Unseen

A Biblical Picture of God’s Presence,      Christ’s Kingdom,      and the Spirit World Around Us

One of the discoveries that filled me with childlike excitement was noticing how often God chose to reveal His presence through a cloud.

Once I saw it,

I couldn't stop seeing it.

There it was with Moses on Mount Sinai.

There it was leading Israel through the wilderness.

There it was standing at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting while God spoke with Moses.

There it was at the Transfiguration,

overshadowing the disciples while the Father's voice declared:

“This is my beloved Son...      Listen to him.”

Then I kept reading.

Jesus spoke of the Son of Man:

“coming in the clouds of heaven.”

Paul wrote about believers meeting the Lord:

“in the clouds.”

Again and again,

the image appears.

Clouds.

God's presence.

God speaking.

God leading.

Christ coming in glory.

For me,

that became a beautiful thread running throughout Scripture.

God Is Not Literally a Cloud

Let me make something clear right away.

I do not believe God is literally a cloud.

A thunderstorm passing over my house is not God relocating to the neighborhood.

The cloud is a metaphor—

a picture that helps my physical mind imagine something spiritual that my physical eyes cannot normally see.

And for someone like me,

that has been enormously helpful.

I have always been a visual thinker.

Words are useful.

Pictures stay with me.

For most of my life, I had an old habit of thinking:

“If I can't see it,      it ain't real.”

That attitude works fairly well when you're looking for your car keys.

It becomes considerably less useful when you're trying to understand the eternal God.

The cloud gave my imagination a bridge.

Why a Cloud Makes Sense to Me

Think about a cloud.

You can see it.

But you cannot grab it.

You cannot put it in a box.

You cannot nail it to the ground.

It moves.

It changes shape.

It can surround you.

It can hide something from your sight.

It can appear enormous,

yet you can pass directly through it.

For me,

that makes the cloud a beautiful visual metaphor for the spiritual reality Scripture describes.

Not because spirits are clouds.

But because clouds help my earthly mind picture something that is present without being solid,

something that moves without legs,

and something that can surround us without our being able to hold it in our hands.

That changed the way I began imagining the spiritual world.

God Used the Cloud Again and Again

In Exodus,

God told Moses:

“Lo,      I come unto thee in a thick cloud,      that the people may hear when I speak with thee.”

Notice what happens.

The cloud is associated with:

God's presence.

And:

God speaking.

Then Israel travels through the wilderness.

Scripture says:

“The Lord went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way.”

Again,

the cloud represents God's presence.

But now there is another important element:

God is leading His people.

That sounds very familiar to me.

Centering Prayer is about listening to God's Spirit

and allowing Him to lead.

The ancient Israelites followed the cloud.

Today,

I seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit whom Scripture tells us God has placed within our hearts.

Different picture.

Same great desire:

Follow God.

The Cloud Comes to Moses' Tent

Then we find another remarkable scene.

Moses enters the Tent of Meeting.

The pillar of cloud comes down

and remains at the entrance.

And Scripture says:

“the Lord spoke with Moses.”

That passage means a great deal to me.

Moses didn't simply believe that God existed somewhere far away.

He developed a relationship with God.

God spoke.

Moses listened.

Moses responded.

And Moses served.

That pattern appears again and again throughout Scripture.

God speaks.

His people listen.

They obey.

God leads.

That is the pattern I recognize in Centering Prayer.

“Listen to Him”

Then we come to the Transfiguration.

A bright cloud overshadows Jesus and His disciples.

And from the cloud comes the Father's command:

“This is my beloved Son,      in whom I am well pleased.      Listen to him.”

I cannot read those words without stopping.

This is a direct commandment by God to every one of us.

"Listen to Him."

Not merely:

study Him.

Admire Him.

Build buildings in His name.

Argue endlessly about Him.

The Father says:

“Listen to Him.”

Those three words could almost serve as the entire instruction manual for Centering Prayer.

We become still.

We turn toward Jesus.

And:

we listen to Him.

My Childhood Picture of God

As a little boy growing up in Catholic school,

I had a very different picture of God.

Like many children,

I imagined God as an elderly gentleman with an enormous gray beard sitting somewhere above the highest clouds.

I spent a surprising amount of time looking upward,

half expecting to catch Him peeking over the edge.

I never found Him.

Mostly I found clouds.

Occasionally an airplane.

And once in a while a bird that seemed completely uninterested in answering my theological questions.

As I grew older,

I began reading Jesus' words more seriously:

“God is Spirit.”

That changed my picture completely.

God is not simply an earthbound human being who happens to live at a higher altitude.

God is Spirit.

He is not confined by walls.

He is not confined by continents.

He is not confined by time.

He is not restricted by the physical limitations that control our bodies.

And suddenly,

the biblical cloud made much more sense to me as an image.

Learning to Picture the Invisible

I think visually.

That is simply how my mind works.

If I can picture something,

I can begin thinking about it in a completely different way.

There is a saying often attributed to Henry Ford:

“If I can see it in my mind,      I can build it.”

Whether or not those were Ford's exact words,

the idea describes me remarkably well.

If I can picture something,

I can begin understanding it.

So when Scripture describes an enormous heavenly realm,

I need some way to visualize it.

Daniel describes:

“ten thousand times ten thousand”

standing before God.

John gives us similarly enormous imagery in Revelation—

thousands upon thousands,

and ten thousand times ten thousand around God's throne.

That is an almost unimaginable number.

One hundred million.

My mind has difficulty visualizing one hundred million anything.

I can barely picture where I put one pair of reading glasses.

So I use the cloud as a mental picture.

Not because Scripture says that all spirits look like clouds.

It doesn't.

But because the cloud helps me imagine the enormous unseen spiritual reality Scripture describes.

Imagine the Heavens Filled With Life

When I picture those countless heavenly beings,

I sometimes imagine the sky filled with cloud-like spiritual forms that are near the ground and moving.

Thousands.

Millions.

An enormous Kingdom beyond what my physical eyes can see.

Revelation describes the armies of heaven following Christ.

That imagery helps me understand something central to my faith:

the spiritual world is not empty.

God's Kingdom is not a deserted palace waiting for someone to arrive.

Scripture gives us images of tremendous spiritual life,

activity,

worship,

service,

and power.

For seventy years, I largely lived as if the visible world was the only world that mattered.

Work.

Money.

Appointments.

Bills.

Possessions.

Problems.

Everything had to fit inside the world my eyes could see.

Then Scripture gradually opened another window.

Christ's Kingdom Is Nearer Than I Thought

As I studied Jesus' teaching about the Kingdom,

I became especially interested in His urgency.

Jesus repeatedly proclaimed:

“The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.”

He told His disciples,      that some standing with Him,      would not taste death,      before seeing the Kingdom come with power.

And in Luke,

Jesus says:

“God's Kingdom is within you.”

For me,

these passages transformed the Kingdom from something I only imagined in the distant future

into a spiritual reality that I believe Christ calls us to recognize and serve now.

His Kingdom is not merely somewhere beyond the stars.

Christ is present through the Holy Spirit.

And Galatians tells us that:

God sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts.

That is incredibly personal.

The King is not distant.

His Spirit is within us.

Stop Looking Only at the Horizon

This understanding has profoundly shaped the way I approach Centering Prayer.

If God is Spirit,

and if His presence is not confined to one building,

one mountain,

one country,

or one physical location,

then every quiet morning becomes an opportunity to turn my heart toward Him.

I don't have to climb Mount Sinai waiting for a cloud to descend.

Which is fortunate,

because at my age,

God would probably have to send somebody down the mountain to get me.

I don't have to stare into the sky hoping to catch heaven becoming visible.

I don't have to wait for thunder.

I don't need fireworks.

I don't need a booming voice.

I become still.

I turn toward the Holy Spirit.

And I ask:

“Jesus,      how may I serve You today?”

Then I listen.

The Cloud Is Not the Power

The cloud itself has no magical power.

Centering Prayer is not about clouds.

It is not about imagination for imagination's sake.

And it is certainly not about turning weather forecasting into theology.

The cloud is simply a picture in my mind.

A metaphor.

A visual doorway that helps me think about the spiritual reality Scripture describes.

The power belongs to God.

The guidance comes through the Holy Spirit.

Christ is the King.

Our responsibility is to listen,

discern,

trust,

and serve.

Reading Scripture With Spiritual Eyes

Once I began picturing the spiritual world,

many passages in Scripture began opening differently for me.

When I read about God appearing in a cloud,

I no longer pictured a human God hiding behind the weather.

I pictured an invisible God graciously giving human beings something visible enough to help them understand His presence.

When I read about heavenly hosts,

I began imagining an enormous spiritual Kingdom alive,      and moving,      around God's throne.

When I read about Christ coming with the clouds,

I began thinking about the majesty and spiritual reality of His Kingdom.

And when I read that God placed the Spirit of His Son within our hearts,

the Kingdom became intensely personal.

The spiritual world was no longer merely something out there.

God's Spirit was calling me within.

Centering Prayer Makes the Invisible Personal

This is where Centering Prayer becomes so important to me.

I cannot normally see the Holy Spirit with my physical eyes.

I cannot normally hear Him with my physical ears.

But Scripture repeatedly tells us to listen,

to discern,

to walk by the Spirit,

and to follow God's leading.

So I become still.

I quiet the squirrels in the attic.

I surrender my own agenda.

And I ask:

“Lord Jesus,      what would You have me do?”

Then I pay attention.

Not because silence is magical.

Not because my imagination is automatically divine.

But because I want to give God my full attention.

And anything I believe I receive must still be discerned through:

the truth,

the love,

the character,

and the teachings of Christ.

God Is Closer Than We Think

Every time I look at clouds now,

they remind me of something far greater than themselves.

They remind me that there is more to reality than what my physical eyes can see.

They remind me of Moses.

They remind me of Israel following God's presence through the wilderness.

They remind me of the Transfiguration.

They remind me of the Father's command:

“Listen to Him.”

They remind me of Christ's Kingdom.

And they remind me that God's Spirit is much closer than I once believed.

Sometimes I imagine those clouds quietly whispering:

“Bill...      stop looking so far away.”

“The God you're searching for is closer than you think.”

The Greatest Picture Is Inside the Heart

For me,

the cloud became a way of picturing the invisible.

But eventually,

even the cloud points beyond itself.

Because the most important place Scripture tells me to look is not the sky.

It is the heart.

God has sent:

“the Spirit of His Son into our hearts.”

That is why Centering Prayer matters so much to me.

I don't have to spend my life waiting for heaven to become visible before I begin serving Christ.

I can serve Him today.

I can listen today.

I can love today.

I can forgive today.

I can bear fruit today.

I can live under Christ's loving authority today.

The cloud simply helped my visual mind understand what Scripture had been telling me all along:

The visible world is not all there is.

God is a Spirit.

Christ is a Spirit, a friend, and a King.

His Kingdom is alive.

His Spirit is within our hearts.

And every morning,

the invitation remains the same:

“Listen to Him.”

So I become still.

I quiet my thoughts.

I turn my heart toward Jesus.

And I ask:

“Lord Jesus...      how may I serve You today?”

Then I listen.

And whenever I look up and see a cloud drifting across the sky,

I smile.

Not because I think the cloud is God.

But because it reminds me that the God I cannot see

is much closer than I ever imagined.

Questions for prayer:
          What do these passages reveal about God?
          What response does it ask of me?
          Is the impression I receive consistent with the character and teaching of Jesus?
          What loving and faithful action should follow?

Daily prayer:

How may I serve You this day?”