“Clouds and darkness are round about Him” (Ps. xcvii. 2).
The presence of clouds upon your sky, and trials in your path, is the very
best evidence that you are following the pillar of cloud, and walking in
the presence of God. They had to enter the cloud before they could behold
the glory of the transfiguration, and a little later that same cloud
became the chariot to receive the ascending Lord, and it is still waiting
as the chariot that will bring His glorious appearing.
Still it is true that white “clouds and darkness are round about His
throne, mercy and truth” are ever in their midst, and “shall go before His
face.”
Perhaps the most beautiful and gracious use of the cloud was to shelter
them from the fiery sun. Like a great umbrella, that majestic pillar
spread its canopy above the camp, and became a shielding shadow from the
burning heat in the treeless desert. No one who has never felt an Oriental
sun can fully appreciate how much this means—a shadow from the heat.
So the Holy Spirit comes between us and the fiery, scorching rays of
sorrow and temptation.