the heavens declare

The evening light wanes early now, summer pink fading to September grays and blues in pillows of dispersing raincloud. The silver half-moon is visible for an instant before being swallowed back up by the mist. The heavens declare.

On a clearer night, I would stay out longer in search of a sky striped with shooting stars or dancing with pillars of aurora—though it’s getting too late in the season for such an already-unlikely event. Still, God’s artistry is unbound by what is “likely.”

The heavens declare.

When I was a little girl roaming wide-open spaces under a cloudless wind-whipped sky, I looked often to the face of the mountain in the northwest corner of the horizon, thinking I might see the face of God there. That was the biggest object I had categories for, so in my mind, that was God’s domain, the closest visual I had to God Himself.

But have you noticed? In the Bible, God is not the mountain. God is on the mountain—in the cloud.

God is not an ancient face of rock, half-buried in glaciers, concrete and definable, conquerable by anyone with the will and stamina to try. And He’s not a momentary formation of cloud, shifting and changeable, enterable by anyone who can climb or fly high enough.

He is neither… and both.

Ancient, real, challenging, multifaceted, mysterious, pervasive, impossible to capture.

The heavens declare.

Heaven is declaring God’s glory;
    the sky is proclaiming his handiwork.
One day gushes the news to the next,
    and one night informs another what needs to be known.
Of course, there’s no speech, no words—
        their voices can’t be heard—
but their sound extends throughout the world;
        their words reach the ends of the earth.

Psalm 19:1-4 CEB

“Glory” is a strange word in Hebrew. Its source word, transliterated kabad, is a verb best defined as “to be heavy, weighty, burdensome.” Kabod is the noun version we translate “glory.”

The heavens declare God’s weightiness. His abundance. That He is not to be trifled with. Like the mountain, He is massive and immovable. Like the clouds in the expanse, He is mysterious and unpredictable. His own Creation reflects tiny pieces of who He is and what it means to enter into His presence. It is a heavy thing.

A heavy, wonderful thing.

And the Creation can’t help itself but invite us into the Creator’s throne room.

The Lord said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.”

Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.

Then a voice said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

1 Kings 19:11-13 NIV