It's hard to keep pointing out silver linings in other people's clouds when storms rage in your personal life. But recently, God spoke to me from the clouds-sort of.

As I navigated through a turbulent week of ministry, another rogue wind of bad news nearly sucked the optimism out of my normally sunny sails. Recognizing that I was spending more time worrying than praying, I decided to take a day off to practice the spiritual discipline of solitude (spelled "y-a-r-d w-o-r-k"). It was one of those Midwestern spring days that began with plenty of sunshine and quickly worked its way into an irritable afternoon.

I stretched my aching back, looked up from my flowerbed at the western sky and chuckled. My mind had found some room to roam and a Peanuts cartoon flashed into my consciousness. Way back when I was a kid I had seen a cartoon strip in which Charlie Brown and his friends were lying on their backs gazing at clouds.

One of the gang, probably Linus, pointed and said something intellectual like, ...