Day 316 in my "Year In My Life Through Pictures" blog series
My picture today is from the City of Paducah's Flood Wall cam. This cam has been up since the day after they installed the flood wall gates to keep the Ohio River out of the city. I actually contacted to city and suggested they do this, so that everyone around here (and across the world) could check in from time to time and see how high the river has gotten.
The river is on the downswing right now. You can see the water line on the flood gate in the mid-right portion of the picture. If not for these flood gates and this flood wall, the city would have been inundated with about 4 feet of water or more. The flood wall was actually an action after the 1937 flood that did much damage to Paducah and other cities along the Ohio River and Mississippi River.
At this time the flood waters are receding here, but down south they are rising. The Corps of Engineers are about to open a levee system in Louisiana to relieve flood waters. The thing is, it's going to flood a whole community with over 15' of water. These folks are frantically packing up anything and everything they can to save from the waters. It is a "needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" type of thing. Similar to what they did at Birdspoint to relieve the waters beginning in Cairo Illinois, but also relieving the flood depth here and up river from us in places like Ledbetter and Smithland. That action alone is what spared my mom's house from being flooded throughout. The predictions were for the river to crest 3' higher than it did, before they blew the Birdspoint Levee. I thank God that they did for those around here, but still felt sorry for those that lost their homes in that man made levee breach.
One thing we can all learn from this, is that God does what He wants, when He wants. The rivers rise and fall at His commands. The rain falls when He tells it to and falls on the heads of the just and the unjust. Only us humans defile God and do what we want. Paul may be the chief of sinners, but I am not far behind him. I am so wretched sometimes, well, a lot of the times. I have many sins that plague me that I can't seem to shake. Some things left me early in my conversion, but others linger on to wreak havoc to my walk. I put these sin barriers between God and me, which is all a fabrication in my mind. I know the bible says that He casts our sins into the depths of the ocean, as far as the East is from the West, but my mind forgets that when I fall into my sin. I want to wallow in it and think of the wedge that I am driving, but it doesn't do that. It is actually selfishness that brings those thoughts, feelings of what I need to do to fix this. Fact is I can't fix anything. Why? Because Christ already has fixed it. My sins were already forgiven before I thought of them. Not that I have a ticket to sin, but I have a mighty God that is not like us and is able to see us through Christ instead of seeing us as we see ourselves when we know we have messed up yet again.
How great is our God! May we all be able to flow like the rivers and go where He commands without questioning that.
No comments:
Post a Comment