Refuge

Yesterday a friend of ours was driving home to Kansas from his second home in Missouri, where his property joins ours. Late in the afternoon, he drove into storms near Joplin, Missouri, about 2 1/2 hours west of here. He recalled the hail falling in sheets, and even the driving, horizontal rain looking white, like a snowstorm. In some places, water ran over the highway like a stream, and he was repeatedly forced to stop because of lack of visibility. For a while, he took shelter from the wind in his car behind a large building, and when the wind and hail shifted and came from the south, he was able to drive north.Within a few minutes, he saw blue sky, and was out of the storm.

We talked to him on the phone after he got home, and were so glad that he was safe. Only this morning, after we saw the news of the massive tornado in Joplin, did we realize the extent of what he had narrowly escaped.

Centuries ago, David, king of Israel, wrote:

God is our refuge and strength,

an ever-present help in trouble.

Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way, 

and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,

though it's waters roar and foam,
and the mountains quake with their surging.

Psalm 46:1

Had King David been in Joplin last night, I'm quite confident he would have written the same thing, because his hope was not only in this life, but he had that certain hope; he had:

...the hope of eternal life, which God, who cannot lie,

 promised before time began.

Titus 1:2

This morning in Joplin, in the aftermath of the storm, I'm certain that there are many people whose faith in the Lord Jesus is even stronger than it was yesterday morning, because they know that hope, and it has been confirmed in their hearts in a way it never was before.

Our hearts go out to them, and they are in our prayers.

Second Nesting

Bluebirds are getting ready for their second nesting, 

and a pair of them have been in and out of the birdhouse just outside our window today.  

It's supposed to storm tonight, 

so they are probably grateful for the shelter.

A Voyage Home

Wild as a bird in flight, this is my river.  

One road of dancing light, rolling to the sea.

Sam Polo

It's raining today; it's been raining steadily all afternoon.  I went to the post office late in the day, and noticed a little stream of water flowing down our driveway.

I grew up on the West Coast, and have always loved the ocean, and ever since I moved to the Midwest, I've liked thinking of being connected to my former home by water.  Follow the small stream down our driveway, and it empties into Bull Shoals Lake.  Twenty five miles down lake, that water flows through the dam at Bull Shoals, AR, into the White River, where it travels on to the Mississippi River, and then to the Gulf of Mexico.

From there, to get to my Ocean, the Pacific, the one that still runs through my veins, it could travel through the Panama Canal, or around the southern tip of South America at Cape Horn, and then north to Fort Dick, California, where I grew up.

Alternately, the water might follow the Gulf Stream around Key West and then north up the east coasts of the US and Canada, then west under the ice at the North Pole, and down the west coast, to get to the same place.

So, if I wrote a note and put it in a bottle, corked it and dropped it in the little stream going down our driveway, conceivably, it could end up on the very beach I frequented as a kid.

Or maybe I'd be better off just sending an e-mail.


.

Chin Rest

Barley finds one more use for his bone.