June Morning

Morning.  From my vantage point, early sun highlights the tree trunks.  Wild canaries' twitters overlays the pervasive song of the cicadas.  A new day, what a gift!  Breathe deeply, if you can, smile at someone you love, and if you're so inclined, write a poem about June and send it as a comment.  Here are 2 of mine:

Winds whisper in the trees
Mockingbirds sing melodies
Life's sweetest strains are songs like these.


Leave the moguls their fame
And kings their powers
I'll be content
Tending my flowers.

Photo Ops

Before sunup yesterday morning, Don and I left for Springfield, where Don had an eye doctor appointment.  Outside the air had been scrubbed clean by the overnight rain, and a whip-poor-will sang the final cadences of the night shift.

Along the way, fog blanketed the bottoms, and drifted through the woods, making the trees stand out like sentries in the mist.  And everywhere, there was water.  It flowed along the highway and streamed out of the rocks.  Small creeks had become rivers, swift and muddy; near Forsyth, Beaver Creek had escaped its bounds and filled the valley, covering the park.  In town, the tennis courts were about 15 feet underwater.

I snapped a few pictures from the car window, but there wasn't time to stop long.  So this morning I went to the lake before sunrise, hoping to capture the same thing when there was more time to compose.  However, in nature, as in life, one seldom gets "overs".  There wasn't much fog and the sunrise was muted.  I took a few pictures anyway, just for drill.  

Meanwhile, Barley stood to the side, knee deep in the water, begging me to throw a stick for him to retrieve.  I obliged him, then went back to my camera, and just started to shoot again when he walked into the picture and sat down in the water precisely in line with the sunrise.  He had apparently sensed my need, and obliged me with the best photo op of the morning.  What a dog!       

Something Preferable

Of His bounty,

The Lord often grants not what we seek,

so as to bestow something preferable.

St. Augustine

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.