The Clouds at Sunset

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 7, 1865

The Clouds at Sunset.

HAVE you ever noticed how beautiful the clouds look when the sun sets? Sometimes so bright that you can scarcely look at them, and richly tinted with purple, gold, and rose color. Yes, you must often have seen them with pleasure, and perhaps have thought, as a little boy did whom I knew, "There is the power and the glory mentioned in the Lord's prayer." Very possibly you may have wondered what those beautifully-colored clouds were, floating up so high above you; but did you ever think that perhaps they yesterday formed part of the dirty puddles of our street, trodden under foot by every passer-by? Or, it may be, they formed a part of the ugly, unsightly ditches about the great city. Some of them may have helped to form part of a noble river, while others may have been the pretty little sparkling dewdrops, which you saw on the grass, or glittering among the spiders' webs in the gardens as you went to school. But the sun has collected the dew and water from the roads, and drawn up the moisture to the skies, together with some from the rivers, the ditches, and wherever there is water. It is the sun that has raised them from earth to heaven, and to him they owe their beauty and brightness.

Thus it will be in the resurrection at the last great day, when Christ shall have collected his people, who are now scattered over the earth like water. They now, it may be, have their portion among the noble and the great, like the water of a mighty river; or they may be poor and despised, like the puddles in the street or the ditches of the city; or smiling bright-eyed little ones, like the dewdrops on the grass; but then they will all, whether small or great, be lifted up to heaven, and shine alike with the brightness and glory of the Sun of righteousness.