Way Up in the Sky

Over the past few months I have been doing a ridiculous amount of driving. I've been driving at different times of the day, but mostly during early morning to early afternoon time. Driving has turned into a time of reflection and thinking through things as it gives me time to think on my own as well as talking to God (while allowing myself to also focus on driving...) Something has struck me, which hasn't quite struck me before in life (other than general awareness of such things), but clouds are some of the most beautiful things ever, and not one of them is the same as another.

One time during the last week of camp, I took some staff in to town to get ice cream after dinner. SC was in the front seat and is an amazing artist - she made the comment as we neared a hill that there were at least 12 different distinct shades in the clouds (and I'm sure many more) at that very moment. Some were white as can be, and some were as grey/black as they could be (as they approached storm-like colours), and the rest were somewhere in between. It was amazing.

Just defining a cloud sounds magnificent - Wikipedia defines it as:

A cloud is a visible mass of droplets of water or frozen crystals suspended in the atmosphere above the surface of the Earth. On Earth the condensing substance is typically water vapor, which forms small droplets or ice crystals, typically 0.01 mm (0.00039 in) in diameter, when cooled to condensation temperature by local convective or larger scale nonconvective lift. When surrounded by billions of other droplets or crystals they become visible as clouds. Dense deep clouds exhibit a high reflectance (70% to 95%) throughout the visible range of wavelengths. They thus appear white, at least from the top. Cloud droplets tend to scatter light efficiently, so that the intensity of the solar radiation decreases with depth into the gases, hence the gray or even sometimes dark appearance at the cloud base. Thin clouds may appear to have acquired the color of their environment or background and clouds illuminated by non-white light, such as during sunrise or sunset, may appear colored accordingly. Clouds look darker in the near-infrared because water absorbs solar radiation at those wavelengths.

Such beauty they possess. Oh, and to continue this conversation - sunrises! How I love sunrises. The colours involved in sunrises just surprises me every time - not one sunrise is alike as it all depends on the weather, the clouds, and the timing of the sunrise. I had the pleasure of watching at least 2 sunrises this summer and as much as they were early mornings, I would not trade them - as so much beauty is possessed in something as simple as a new day beginning - and the company was pretty good too!

A sunrise after an overnight at Silver Birches on Skeleton Lake - 6 am

As I sit here writing this, I look out the window to see the clouds just slowly passing by. It's amazing how it all works, it's suspended where it is in the sky, it looks like you can reach out and squish it a little or lie down on it for a comfortable place to lie down. So much beauty in something so simple - I'm just in awe of different things God has distinctly thought through in order to give us a place to live for our lives, and a place in which we are given every opportunity to glorify His name through our actions, words, thoughts, and lives because of what He has created for us.