Psalms 18:11

His pavilions round about Him were. .. thick clouds of the skies.

The ministry of the cloud

His pavilions are thick clouds! Then the cloud is not a destructive libertine, some stray, haphazard, lawless force, the grim parent of shadow and chill and tempest. “His pavilions are thick clouds.” The clouds are the dwelling places of God. He lives in them; He moves through them; He pervades them with the gentle ministries of grace and love. “The clouds drop down their dew.” Then the clouds are more than shutters; they are springs. They do more than exclude the sunlight; they are the parents of the fertilising rains, and the drenching mists and dews. It is something of a triumph when we have got thus far in our religious faith. The cloud may hide the light; it does not destroy it. The cloud does not disprove the light; it is really the proof of the light. Without the warm and genial light there could be no cloud; the cloud is the creation of light. When, therefore, the cloud is forming, it means the sun is working. Raindrops can be traced to sunbeams. Love yearns to send a gentle rain, and so love prepares a cloud. So, the cloud is part of the answer to our prayer for dew. If, therefore, I have been asking my God for a softening, fertilising rain, I must not be discomfited by the appearance of a chilling and darkening cloud. If I have been asking for a drenching baptism of dew, I must not lose my heart when there comes a confusing mist. We asked the Lord to bless our nation; there came a chilling disappointment; the answer was in a cloud! Have you ever noticed how many of the dispositions of the perfected life can only be richly gained in the baptism of shadow and tears? And when I contemplate the dispositions which are the creations of the Spirit I feel that for their perfect nourishing something is needed of moistness and of shade. Here is a short list of the beautiful things: “Love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.” I am more inclined to call them ferns than flowers! I don’t think they would come to any luxurious profusion and beauty if they were grown in the prolonged and cloudless glare! Here is an exquisite fern--“gentleness.” Where will you find it growing in richest profusion? You will find it growing in the life that has known the shadow and the tear. There is no touch so tenderly gentle as the touch of the wounded hand. There is no speech so insinuatingly sympathetic as the speech of those who have been folded about by the garment of night. Gentleness is a fern, and it requires the ministry of the cloud. Here is another rare and beautiful fern--“long suffering.” How can you grow that in the “garish day”? “Long suffering” is a fern, and it needs the ministry of the cloud. And is it otherwise with the ferns of “goodness” and “love”? How this love fern expands when life passes into the shadow; when husband or child is laid low, how love puts on strength and beauty, whether the lover be peasant wife or queen! Now, I do not think we have any difficulty in perceiving the influence of the cloud in the individual life. “in my distress Thou hast enlarged me.” Enlarged! It is a very spacious word, and includes the complementary meanings of broadening and enrichment. “In my cloud experience Thou hast enriched me!” A man goes into the cloud rough and boorish, and full of domineering aggression, and he emerges from its ministry strangely softened and refined! He entered the cloud hard and dry as a pavement; he emerges with disposition suggestive of the fernery. “In my distress Thou hast enriched me!” But the cloud experience is not only the minister of enrichment, but also of enlargement! It is in the cloud that men grow the fern of a spacious tolerance. Narrowness is transformed to breadth. In the personal life, if it were not for the cloud we should become and remain dry and infertile as Sahara; it is the providential cloud that calls forth the hidden growth, the sleeping ferns, and transforms, the dust heap into a thing of grace and beauty. It is not otherwise with the ministry of the cloud m the sphere of the home. There is many a family which never realises its unity until it is enveloped in the folds of a chilling cloud. Health and luxury are too often divisive; sickness and sorrow are wondrous cements. Luxury nourishes a thoughtless individualism; adversity discovers hidden and profounder kinships. “We shall know each other better when the mists have roiled away!” Ah! but we sometimes never know each other until we meet together in the mist! It is in the common cloud that the family finds its kinship. It is in our sorrow that deep calleth unto deep, and our communion is revealed. Is it otherwise in the larger life and family of the nations? Does the cloud ministry exercise its influence in the State? Surely we may say that the common life of a people is deepened and enriched by the ministry of the shade. A people is not consolidated by common material interests end aims. It is not by free trade or by reciprocity that we shall forge the links of enduring fellowships. Juxtaposition is not fellowship. It is not the prosperous glare that makes us one. We fall apart in the noontide; we draw closer to each other in the night. It is in the national clouds and shadows, and in the nation’s tears that you will find the forces of a true consolidation. The clouds, in their courses, have been the friends of the national life. (J. H. Jowett M. A.)