pictures in the sky

(another classic from the pen of rich mullins...)

There are those skies - skies stretched so tight you just know they're about to pop - skies in whose seamless blue reaches down to you like sails full of wind, sails moving ships like these skies move you, like these skies move oceans, worlds, time ... skies stretched tight like balloons at birthday parties, full of breath, light like helium, so light you have to tie them down.

There are skies like that. Skies so light they look like they could easily be lifted away, so light they seem almost to lift you, to suck you out of the grip of gravity.

But it is the sun they lift, these skies - skies into whose perfectly arched and balanced heads any sun would rise and find room therein to shine. These skies stay poised, enormously gentle, like giants across whom children and crawl and play - giants who are strong enough to feel the touch of these little ones and not move one muscle to risk unbalancing or frightening them.

There are skies like that. You have to look up to see them. You cannot find them beneath you or within you. They are "out" there...they are "up" there.

There are these skies.

Skies stretched so tight you just know you're about to pop standing beneath them. Your lungs may burst from breathing their sizable air - air from their cool heights so tall they scrape the footings of heaven - skies so pure and strong that God built His New Jerusalem on their back. And they reach up toward that Holy City like Romeo scaling the forbidden wall beneath Juliet - skies that go endlessly, nearly forever with the beauty of her face, the quiet, unshaken gaze of her eyes, skies alive with all the virility and tenderness of young love - skies as ancient as time, as innocent as babies held in the Hands of Eternity.

And I was trying to think of how I could encourage you - of what I could say to spur you on, just trying to come up with something. And then I was overcome.

And you might say, "but it's just a sky" - but you could say that only if you'd never seen it. And you might say, "Oh, the sky is just a metaphor and he's really overcome by something spiritual, like, say, the love of God." But if the sky is only a metaphor, it is God's metaphor, and if you'd look up - if you'd just look up...well, I haven't the words, but...

There are those skies - skies stretched so tight you just know they're about to pop...

(Rich Mullins, Release Magazine, 1995)