The title lyric is from a song by one of my favorite hippies — whose music has been a constant source of inspiration through the years.
So, here’s what happened to me recently. I’ll let you draw from it what you will.
For several weeks, I had been attempting to accomplish something that was very important to me. I had asked the Lord for His help, and was attempting to live according to His will. Yet, for all my effort, nothing (and I do mean nothing) seemed to be working out right.
For whatever reason, the very God who I was attempting to draw near to seemed insistent on frustrating my plans. In all three portions of my Bible reading (OT, Poetry, NT), I encountered passage after passage proclaiming God’s inexorable wrath and judgment on his own people for their rebellion against Him. Sermons I heard on the radio and from the pulpit left me feeling like an unruly, undeserving, and unwanted child. After all, in the eyes of my perfect and majestic Father, how could I be anything more than a mere nuisance and an embarrassment?
And then, once I had reached that point — the point of being painfully aware of my own lowness in comparison to God’s greatness — once I had nothing left of my own strength to rely on, and could only look up helplessly and cry out like the blind, the lepers, and the sinners of Jesus’ day “Lord, have mercy on me!”, then, slowly but surely, the “clouds” in my life began to lift. Or, more accurately, God pulled me up through them.
There are still several major difficulties in my life. But, I’ve begun to attribute them to the works of the Evil One rather than the judgment of God. I hope that I’ve learned my lesson about putting the Lord in his rightful place — now it’s Satan’s turn to be on the receiving end of God’s corrective power. Check the last verse of my Bible reading for today:
God’s prophet, speaking to the minions of the Devil, in Ezekiel 13:22-23
Because with lies you have made the heart of the righteous sad, whom I have not made sad; and you have strengthened the hands of the wicked, so that he does not turn from his wicked way to save his life. Therefore you shall no longer envision futility nor practice divination; for I will deliver My people out of your hand, and you shall know that I am the Lord.