The Climb Above the Clouds

In 2019, mountaineer Sarah Marquis described something that every serious climber knows but few expect the first time. On the ascent of a major peak, there comes a moment when you pass through the cloud layer. Below, the world is familiar — towns, roads, trees you can name. Then the clouds swallow everything. Visibility drops to nothing. You climb blind, trusting only the trail beneath your boots and the voice of your guide ahead. It is disorienting. It is lonely. And most people turn back.

But those who keep climbing break through. Above the clouds, the air is sharp and impossibly clear. The sun blazes with an intensity that feels almost dangerous, almost alive. Climbers describe it as entering another world entirely — one that was always there, just hidden beneath the ordinary sky.

This is what happened to Moses on Sinai. The Almighty called him up, and for six days the cloud covered the mountain. Six days of waiting in obscurity, seeing nothing, hearing nothing. Then on the seventh day, God spoke from within the cloud. To the Israelites watching from below, the glory of the Lord looked like a consuming fire on the mountaintop.

The spiritual life demands this same willingness — to leave the familiar camp behind, to enter the cloud without guarantees, and to wait there until God speaks. Most of us want the fire without the fog. But Moses understood that the presence of the Most High is found not by avoiding the cloud, but by walking straight into it.