As I am writing this blog I am listening to The Transfiguration by Sufjan Stevens. The song ends by repeating:
Lost in a cloud a voice: Have no fear! We draw near!
Lost in a cloud, a sign: Son of Man! Turn your ear!
Lost in a cloud, a voice: Lamb of God! We draw near!
Lost in a cloud a sign: Son of Man! Son of God!
The cloud being referenced is the cloud hiding the face of the Father, when He spoke of Jesus, to Peter, James and John on a mountainside. Jesus has just stood along side Moses and Elijah (Israels two greatest leaders/prophets) and was transfigured from a lowly carpenter into a the Lord in all His glory.
I have read this story since I was a child, but Stevens has helped me go somewhere else. I have always stayed on the surface of the story; Jesus has been revealed as Lord, He is greater than Israel's prophets and is being affirmed by the Father. I felt very intelligent when I first put together that God's glory had been personified as a cloud during the Jews time wandering the dessert. It all fit so neatly, Jesus is clearly the greatest of all Jews, the messiah, God Himself.
This is all true.
But the cloud never meant a thing to me. It's just a cloud.
This is no ordinary cloud though. This cloud engulfs them (Matthew 9:34), they are as Stevens puts it "lost in a cloud".
I have grown obsessed with this song and as result, this piece of scripture over the past week. I want to be lost in that cloud. I am tired of the rest of the world. I am tired of my questions, my doubts, my responsibilities. I want to be in the cloud. I want to be engulfed in the presence of God. I want that foreboding cloud in the distance, the cloud that leads the way, to be close.
