Standing outside the office on a bright, cold October morning, I felt the Lord inviting me to a moment of quiet with Him. Like a father tapping his son on the shoulder, then with a glance and a motion saying without words, “Follow me. I want to show you something.”
The morning sun touching the fall colors the nearby trees. And above those trees, the clouds caught my eyes. Billowing and flowing across the sky like foam carried by a river.
I get to help in a middle school science class a little each week. They’ve been learning all about wind and clouds, and so have I. All over again. Learning about vapor and the interplay of hot and cold, dust and water, stillness and flow.
As I followed the clouds with my eyes, a nearby rooftop interrupted the view. From a vent on the roof, vapor rose into the cold morning air, visible for a moment before dissipating into the atmosphere around it. And while contemplating how the same principles governed the clouds in the sky and the vapor from the rooftop, I saw those same principles at work in my own breath, briefly becoming a fog before my eyes.
Ecclesiastes, from its opening chapter onward, reminds us that everything is a vapor. Not meaningless, not empty, not void, but like a breath, ungraspable, fleeting, impossible to hold. And yet, still real. Still beautiful. Still experienceable.
How often have I mistaken my inability to grasp something for its lack of substance? Tried to give shape to things that were never meant to hold their shape?
The clouds are no less beautiful because they refuse to stay where they are. My breath is no less real because I cannot hold it in my hands.
Perhaps there’s more to experience when I stop trying to hold on to everything. May I learn to embrace the formless without fear.