Perspective: Inclement Weather

So on my first flight on my way to Europe, from SLC to Dallas, things were going just dandy. We'd flown for a while, when the pilot came on the intercom thing. I figured he was going to give the classic going in for a landing / time and weather in Dallas speech, but no! He said that there were heavy storms so we had to redirect to Lubbock. Turns out we didn't pull up to the terminal at the Dallas airport for another eight hours (!), but that's not the focus of our story.

What was most suprising about the whole thing was the annoucement that there was inclement weather. I had a window seat, and it was obviously bright and sunny. When I looked down, there were clouds everywhere, but the clouds were white too! Not at all like storm clouds. And that's when I realized it. It made perfect sense that it was bright and sunny and yet really stormy at the same time, as we were ABOVE the storm. Clouds are ALWAYS white!

So there are two learnings here: 1) If you're in a stormy time of life, things may not seem so stormy when you consider the big picture / eternal perspective. Actually, learning 1b would be that others may be having a really hard time (symbolized by storms, if you didn't get that one), but from our perspective it might not appear that was at all. So I guess you just never know what others are going through unless you really ask them and they open up enough to tell you.

Learning number 2 - the clouds were white because clouds are always white! The only reason they seem dark is because there's lots of them and the ones on top (that I saw from the plane) are stopping the light from the sun (which is always there...I guess we could have a learning 3 about the light always being there, but we shan't) from getting through. So learning 2 is that there are no "darkeness creators," just things that stop the light. So if there is light, darkness can't overwhelm it...the very fact that there is lights means the darkness must go.

I hope this makes sense to someone, because I am obviously pretty excited about it. So excited that my ability to express myself has left me.