The clouds be rolled back...

Today at church we sang the song "It is well with my soul." I always love singing that song, because you can't help but sing it with gusto and as you do, you realize that what you are declaring flies directly in the face of all the fears and complaints you have uttered throughout the week. I usually end up feeling both humbled by the anxiety I have lived with that week and utterly joyful at the reality that what I am shouting from the rooftops is true and real and completely enough for me. I love going to church because I am reminded week after week that I am not alone in my walk with the Lord. Hundreds of people around me are proclaiming the same thing and we are all singing at the top of our lungs...and we are all changed by the words that we sing. It's not that I don't hum a hymn to myself throughout the week or hear a great worship song on the radio that I sing in the car. I do. But its just different to have a "great cloud of witnesses" right next to you to do it as well. This reminds me to pray for more joy for the missionaries who are not given this freedom where they work. That must be so hard.

One of the lines from that song is "Oh Lord haste the day when my faith shall be sight. The clouds be rolled back as a scroll..." This picture is so vivid to me lately because twice now in the last month (including last night), I have heard the loudest thunder of my life crack through the sky as I am laying in bed. I am not kidding. These two nights have been almost earth shattering in both the loudness and the "fullness" of the rumbles. I have had visions of Jesus coming down through a sky that is ripped open to reveal the majesty of Heaven and him riding on a horse on a cloud. Sounds childish, but what do we really have to go on for this incredible event other than what scripture gives us and how we picture that? I just thought the thunder seemed loud enough to rip something in the sky apart. Makes me both dread and ache for the chance to see the day of the Lord. As Christians we are to look eagerly toward it, for it is our glory to be one with the Lord on that day. But thunder like that...boy, it reminds me of when people in the Bible saw angels and the first reaction was fear. It will be so awe-inspiring that cowering might be the only appropriate initial response. Anyways, I know I get all "eschatological" sometimes and that can weird people out. :-) Silly thunder got me thinking about it again!