The last leg of my trip from Sarasota to Bakersfield, California, yesterday started in Phoenix. I had been watching the weather forecast for weeks, curious what to expect for the race tomorrow. So I knew it had been rainy that morning and was supposed to be clearing. When the pilot said he expected the last part of the ride to be bumpy, I nodded.

Sure enough, about 20 minutes before landing the clear skies gave way to a blanket of clouds. I decided I’d watch the decent through my window-seat view.

For quite a while we flew just above the clouds. That’s all you could see beneath the plane. I was waiting to see when the pilot decided to dive. When he did, I looked at my watch.

It was roughly six minutes later when the plane was beneath the clouds, the blanket shadowing Bakersfield.

I wondered what goes through a pilot’s mind before and during a decent into such coverage. If I could, I wanted to ask the pilot to give me one word to describe what he felt during that six minutes flying through the clouds.

Often we feel like that. Those six minutes could literally be six weeks, months, years, or decades. The possible one-word list is long:

• Unsettled
• Edgy
• Heavy
• Antsy
• Lost
• Tired
• Frustrated
• Guarded

The truth I was reminded of watching out that window is this: God doesn’t change.

During that twenty minutes while experiencing the beauty above the clouds, the uncertainty through the clouds, and the darkness under the clouds, my location and my experience didn’t impact Him. Our relationship remained the same every second.

Wherever you find yourself in relation to the clouds, hold on to this truth. The clouds were created. Their Creator is not drained or threatened by them. He remains the same above, through, and under.

Photo by Johannes Mändle on Unsplash