We Stand Straight and Tall

 

 

During this trying time in Texas so much has stood out that it becomes impossible to point to any one thing that surpasses the rest. Yesterday, for instance, I saw a man calmly recounting how his wife and two children slipped out of his hands into the Guadeloupé. He stood strait and tall. He intimated how one ranch wouldn’t allow him on their property to search for the bodies while the LBJ ranch welcomed him with open arms.

All the while there are those trying to place blame. Even on the owner of Mystic who gave his life trying to save little girls. Yet the warnings have been there! And the search continues. There is no end to this because there are those who will never be found. The very landscape of the Hill Country hides its secrets. People vacation there for solitude. Now they are stuck under a sunken log at the bottom of thirty feet of water. Time passes, the river flows and the only thing the family knows is the time of the last phone call.

To quote: These are the times that try men’s souls. It’s been close to two weeks, and the rains just stopped.

The Guadalupe River flows from Kerr County, Texas, to San Antonio Bay on the Gulf Coast, a journey of approximately 250 miles from its source in the hill country. 

More rain, more wash, into the Gulf of America. You do the math. How much does a five-year-old little girl weigh? Down 250 miles of rocks, and fast water, turtles and catfish. Most get tangled up in the brush washed down. Trees and logs. In the brush on the banks, they use sharp sticks when they detect the smell. But it all smells. Trust me. I know.

At times like these there are those that question God. But God didn’t do this. The gods of thunder and lightning did this. The true God sent us. The people of Texas stood up, like that man searching for his family. And we showed America who we are. And we found as many as we could, and we took them home! Not sent, took! That’s what you do for a little lady who has fallen asleep.

Want to know the most amazing miracle of creation? Free will. Think about it. If you know that God is all knowing, all powerful how can we do anything that He does not already know? We live in time. Time was created by God. We view creation as creations, therefore we understand creation from a created point. All things have a beginning. Therefore, if there is a God, someone or something had to have created Him. Then you have another problem. Who created that? The simple fact is we are here now. We can’t deny that. Neither can we understand it. We weren’t designed to understand it. And we can’t understand free will created by an all-knowing God. Yet we have it.

God appreciates even when we make a wrong choice just as much as when we make a right one. Because God said Let us make man in our image. God gave us the recipe. We bake the cake. The forces of the earth blow where they will. We endure, adjust, bake the cake.

We will never be Gods. But we are in His image. We were created in a master plan. Paul tells us we do what we don’t want to do, but hopefully we do what we know is right. The innumerable timelines are beyond our understanding. But they wouldn’t be there had God not created them. And we will never understand why the little girl died. But her timeline was to return to her creator. A tad early, yes, but we are right behind her and when we all meet again, we will be overjoyed. . . and we will still not understand.