Article March 17, 1945 Issue

A Bright Cloud

FANNY GLADYS JONES

One is rather given to think of a cloud as something that obscures one's perception or vision, but in Matthew 17, in which is recorded the experience of the transfiguration, a bright cloud is mentioned. It is related that "while he yet spake, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them: and behold a voice out of the cloud, which said. This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased: hear ye him."

As we ponder this outstanding event in the earthly experience of Christ Jesus, we see that at that supreme moment he was proving to his disciples man's oneness with the Father, his true being, which knew no sense of separation, no lack, no sin, disease, or death, but only the glory of spiritual selfhood, the beloved of Love. This bright cloud was to afford them the protection of spiritual enlightenment. Thus we see divine Love, all-embracing, all-sustaining, protecting its own idea.

Mary experienced this sheltering or protecting quality of divine Love when an angel came to her "and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God" (Luke 1:35). Referring to this passage, our Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 29), "The Holy Ghost, or divine Spirit, overshadowed the pure sense of the Virgin-mother with the full recognition that being is Spirit."

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