Beyond the Blue
Numbers 4:4, 7, 9, 11
“This is the service of the sons of Kohath in the tent of meeting: the most holy things. … And over the table of the bread of the Presence they shall spread a cloth of blue. … And they shall take a cloth of blue and cover the lampstand for the light. … And over the golden altar they shall spread a cloth of blue.”
It’s late afternoon here in central North Carolina and there isn’t a single cloud in the sky on this pristine day. I recall a comment my son once made on a day just like this one: “Daddy, imagine if God made the sky green instead of blue?!” We imagined it together and quickly realized how bland a day like this would look if the grass and trees and shrubs and sky and waterways were all the same color. I don’t know the scientific explanation for why I’m enthralled by the blue topaz ring on my wife’s finger or bythe teal Caribbean Ocean or by our favorite swimming hole in the NC mountains with its bluish boulders, but I know for a fact that God’s creation of blue was a remarkable thing and that my very best days under the sun are draped in it.
Five times in Numbers 4, God commands the Kohathites to cover the holiest tabernacle instruments in a cloth of blue when transporting them from place to place, and I can’t help but see in this command an analogy for the way God built the world. The sky is like a shroud covering highest heaven, concealing the Face of God as it were, and I long to gaze through it—to see an outline of Zion’s hills awaiting me at the world’s end! This turquoise cloak of sky is a beautiful veil, but it’s a veil nonetheless: a portable curtain that will one day be drawn by Providence’s hand to uncover the most spectacular vision of all. A vision that will make even the clearest autumn day seem like a black funeral shroud in contrast.
Pray this resolution with me in your own words, friend: “Lord, may my life today be like a cloudless blue sky in this gray, hopeless world. May my words and deeds be beautiful in Your eyes, drawing others near, guarding what is holy and giving those who cross my path a little glimpse of heavenly wonder.”