My friend, Doug Kreighbaum, talked last weekend about the ancient mystics believing in a Cloud of Mystery. When they encountered issues in life that were too hard-to-explain, they just tucked those away inside the Cloud and left them for God to sort out.
I like that. If we can send files, manuscripts, movies, and blogs out into The Cloud for storage, why not problems? Why not take the questions-too-big-to-answer and send them to the Cloud of Mystery to be solved another day. Maybe another eon, in fact.
When the Fed-Ex driver told me recently that his two-month old son had died of SIDS during his first day of daycare, I didn’t know about the cloud. But, I did know about the pain. This young dad looked at me with sad eyes and said, “People tell you God is good, but I just don’t get this.”
I kind of wanted to run screaming from this sudden, unexpected moment of vulnerability. Instead, I said, “I don’t get it, either. I didn’t get it when my baby granddaughter died. And I don’t get it now.”
We just stood in the doorway for a minute, both of us staring at the ground, and then I said, “Some things , like this loss, we will never understand on this side of eternity. And yet, God is good. I’m not sure how those two things work together. I just know they do.”
He nodded, thanked me, and climbed back into his truck. I knew I hadn’t been eloquent. I hadn’t known how to impart faith to him. Or comfort. Or hope. I hadn’t known how to explain that God really can be trusted with great mysteries and great sorrows because His ways are so much higher than our ways. I simply didn’t now what to say.
When I see him next time, though, I’m telling him about The Cloud.
That’s so sad. Trey Allemang once quoted someone as saying that we cannot define the goodness of God by how wonderful our circumstances are or or not. His goodness is bigger than that. I’ve never been able to explain it again exactly, but I got it then. He is good, but the days aren’t always.