Thou hast covered thyself with a cloud, that our prayer should not pass through.
The verse expresses the feeling that God has hidden himself behind a cloud so that prayer cannot pass through to him and is not heard. The cloud does not mean that God has changed or withdrawn, but that people themselves have turned away from him, and their own darkness obscures his brightness. When prayer seems blocked, the lesson is to examine oneself rather than to conclude that God's light has fled.
The same distress appears when complaint that God is obscuring himself gives way, through a daughter's illness and recognition of neglect, to renewed attention to duty as a mother. The verse is one of the dark, gloomy places in the history of the life of faith where Christians turn down a corner and keep returning to read it, call it to mind, talk about it, and meditate on it while letting the bright, cheery places go. Dwelling on it alone gives a one-sided, untruthful representation of Christian life that does great injury, hinders well-being, keeps growth partial instead of growing in every grace, and leaves hope and joy, which are fruits of the Spirit to be carefully tended, uncultivated.
The verse expresses the feeling that God has hidden himself behind a cloud so that prayer cannot pass through to him and is not heard. The cloud does not mean that God has changed or withdrawn, but that people themselves have turned away from him, and their own darkness obscures his brightness. When prayer seems blocked, the lesson is to examine oneself rather than to conclude that God's light has fled.
The same distress appears when complaint that God is obscuring himself gives way, through a daughter's illness and recognition of neglect, to renewed attention to duty as a mother. The verse is one of the dark, gloomy places in the history of the life of faith where Christians turn down a corner and keep returning to read it, call it to mind, talk about it, and meditate on it while letting the bright, cheery places go. Dwelling on it alone gives a one-sided, untruthful representation of Christian life that does great injury, hinders well-being, keeps growth partial instead of growing in every grace, and leaves hope and joy, which are fruits of the Spirit to be carefully tended, uncultivated.