Day 2 y son, Joshua, and I went exploring with a church group on M the Colorado River in Texas just above Lake Buchanan. We intended to fish, but the river was swollen by rains upstream. The fishing was terrible, but exploring was fun.
We watched a crane as he dove off a towering rock ledge and flapped and cruised his way upward in spiral flight. We caught a glimpse of a huge alligator gar looking for food along the bank of the muddy river. We saw ten thousand mud martins darting in and out of the cliffs. And we spied a lone cactus, wedged in a slit on a sheer rock cliff, thirty feet from the ground, its deep red blossoms startling the eye on the face of that grim gray wall. God did that. Only He could create such a seed, so hungry for life, able to sprout with a hint of soil, then send its tender roots into the crack, groping for moisture. Only God could make that cactus, suspended on the cliff, find a hold and produce a full bouquet of beautiful flowers. Maybe you feel like a cactus grasping for footholds on the rock. Sometimes I feel that way. The world seems stern, maybe even cruel; times are hard. You are barely hanging on. The Great Landscaper of the universe sets a splash of brilliant red amid the rocks, transforming the foreboding into the intriguing. Watch him do this today with your virus-infected landscape. Don’t let the coronavirus dominate your mind and spirit. Think about the Lenten season. We rehearse each year during those days the passion of our Lord in that last week of His life on earth. We see the response of Jesus amid the harsh stone, the great difficulty. Stripped and beaten, mocked and ridiculed, 13
