Refuge

"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 its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging.”

(Psalm 46:1-3)

We have a bit of a bad track record with our national parks trips and natural disasters. Luckily for us, the disasters always seem to follow behind us.

Several of the places we have visited over the past couple of years are now inaccessible to other tourists. Floods washed away sections of road through the Lamar Valley the spring after we visited Yellowstone National Park. The suspension bridge leading to the Grove of the Patriarchs in Mt. Rainier was made impassable by flooding that same year. And, more recently, sections of the Pacific Coastal Highway have been destroyed by mudslides.

But our nearest brush with danger involved fire rather than flood. On our last day in Yosemite National Park, we visited the Marisposa Grove, home to a collection of giant sequoias. Conditions had been extremely dry inside the park. Everywhere we went, we saw warnings posted about fire risks and restrictions. Apparently, someone decided not to heed the warnings.

We were safely on our way to Sequoia National Park the following day when we started hearing stories about a wildfire in the Mariposa Grove. Hundreds of tourists had to be evacuated by shuttle bus, down stretches of road lined by burning forest. If we had delayed our departure from Yosemite by 24-hours, we would have been on those buses.

It is a reminder of a difficult reality—Our lives are predictably unpredictable.

But regardless of what is happening around us, we never walk alone. God is our ever-present help in times of trouble.