Part 5, Chapter 14
Imagine this. We are walking outside and everywhere we go there is a cloud, this cloud seems to go wherever we travel. And out of this cloud comes gentle, refreshing rain. We move in this direction and that and the rain keeps coming down upon us. We are not annoyed with it because it feels so good.
In the Old Testament, God appeared as a cloud to lead the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt to freedom. In the New Testament, at the Transfiguration, a cloud appeared and the voice of God spoke from the cloud. It is fitting to think of God as a cloud. But instead of God following us around, we have to remember that God knows what we are going to do even before we do it and He is one step ahead of us. Now the rain is the graces that God is bestowing upon us. God knew even before He created the world all the graces He would bestow upon us. “Even so he always loved you from eternity, and therefore he made ready all the graces and gifts with which he has endowed you” (Introduction to the Devout Life, 201). So in our analogy of the cloud with rain, God has known every drop of rain (grace) that He was going to give us. WOW!!! That is just AWESOME!!! Just think about this, God loves us and He knows all the help he is going to give us to love Him back. “Consider the eternal love God has borne you, in that, even before our Lord Jesus Christ became man and suffered on the Cross for you, his divine majesty designed your existence and loved you” (Introduction to the Devout Life, 201). What more is there to say, God loves us and graces us!