5:16 p.m. November 9, 2007On board Malaysian AirlinesFlight MH 705 MNL-KL Flying 40,000 feet from sea level, the plane I’m on inside and above the clouds colored gray, orange, and white by the sunset, I remember David’s question to me when he was still 6, just a few months after he was resurrected. “Mommy, has anybody touched the clouds?” David asked. Not knowing what he was up to, I took his question seriously and tried to answer it.   “Well, if you’re on a plane, up in the sky, you still can’t touch the clouds,” I answered.   Proceeding further with my analysis, I said, “Even if you jump off the plane with a parachute, you really don’t get to touch the clouds.” I haven’t really jumped off the plane with a parachute.  I figured the person on a parachute just goes through the clouds but does not touch them as though they were a dense form of matter. Even if you were on a high mountain covered with clouds, these clouds would be just as fog.  You can’t touch fog. And so, in my limited understanding of how one can possibly touch the clouds, I concluded for David, “None, no one has touched the clouds, David.” “Well, I have,” David replied.  “I have touched the clouds.” “What do you mean?” I asked perplexed. “I touched the clouds when I went to heaven,” he said matter-of-factly. “You did?  How?” I recognized my son was in a moment of remembering heaven. I listened carefully to his explanation. “If these are the clouds,” David pointed to the ground, “the castle of Jesus is this high,” David stretched his arm as high as he could and leveled his hand. Just by the proportions that David was trying to depict, I could imagine how magnificently high and colossal the castle of Jesus is. “I touched the clouds just before I entered the gates of heaven,” David said. Ah, the sunset!  The view from above the clouds is breathtaking.  The clouds look orange, and farther on to what seems like the wall of the sky the orange clouds are like gently floating soft fire wrapped by gray and blue clouds.  The sight is magnificent, but surely nothing compared to the clouds in heaven that David could touch as one can touch the ground of the earth. Flying above the clouds now, through the plane window, I see what David meant.  The clouds were beneath him and towering in front of him was the castle of King Jesus.  Above me is endless blue of varying hues gradually getting darker above as the night encroaches. I’m not a jet setter.  At 42, this plane trip to Malaysia is just my second international flight, the first being to Indonesia and I was on aisle seats for my round trip flights to and from Jakarta. Having David’s story in my mind, I have looked at the late afternoon and early evening clouds in a different light – clouds beneath me, the clouds as the ground rather than a distant canopy above me. “I have touched the clouds,” David’s statement has been echoing in my mind.   Only in heaven can the clouds be the ground beneath, the eternal walkway.   Of course, David could touch the clouds of heaven.  He was in heaven as a spirit, and his spirit touched the clouds.  The clouds and immortal spirits connect. David’s spirit felt the clouds.