Catalina State Park, Tucson, Arizona
And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. ~ Philippians 4:7
When I woke up this morning, I began praying (as I usually do). And in the midst of my prayers, thoughts began forming as well (as they usually do). I was thinking about how our country (and the world) is responding to the COVID-19 virus. I was thinking about all the people who seem to be so anxious or even panicked about it. And I was thinking about how many times, just in recent times, people felt the world was coming to an end, and how many times people have panicked, and yes, in some cases, there’ve been great disasters and horrible losses. But what upsets me is how so many Christians react. How they spread their gloom and doomsday theories and lay them squarely at the feet of the wrath of God.
That’s not where they belong.
Is God a wrathful God? Yes, He can be. Does He choose to punish us for our sins? Yes. He must, because He’s a just God. We believe Jesus has already paid for our sins, because we have accepted Him as our Lord and Savior, and so, our punishments as Christians are only discipline – just as you would discipline your own child when they’ve done something wrong.
In my lifetime I’ve heard some things. Things like – Jesus was on His way during WWII (we’re still here and He’s not returned yet), or God was punishing the sins of New Orleans and sent Hurricane Katrina (which barely inflicted any damage on the ‘most sinful’ area, the French Quarter), or God’s punishing the gay people by sending the HIV virus (funny how it infects more people than that – even worse globally), or Bill Clinton is the Antichrist (so’s Oprah, by the way), or . . . .
You get the picture.
My daughter-in-law, Shena sent me this as a nice reminder:
Blaine spent the entire morning on the Jeep – – checking it out on his own, making calls, and taking it to be looked at.
I used the time to work on the blog. Of course. 😊
Once he returned, we went out on our bikes – because my wonderful husband was able to fix mine the other day! I just haven’t said anything because I’d not taken it out yet. But we did today, and it worked like new!
We rode over to the main area where most of the trails leave from and before we were even close, we encountered both sides of the road lined with cars! There were people everywhere! You’d think it was a summer Saturday or a Sunday afternoon! And then we started noticing who was out and about – – college kids and families (mostly moms) with kids. The kids who no longer have school, remember?
We walked the Nature Trail because we hadn’t done that yet. It was okay. Pretty tame considering what we’ve been doing. 😊 It felt pretty warm today, and that’s because it was around noon and it was 75⁰ and brilliantly sunny. (But it’s a dry heat . . . lol)
Up there at the end of what you can see of the trail is where I was standing to take the next picture.
Gives you some perspective. : )
It turned out this wasn’t actually rock, but some kind of cement!
There were other prints near other signs. This one’s “man”.
According to the sign board anyway, 8 miles away.
We noticed pads growing every which way, so we weren’t sure what they mean by this. . .
We sat on that bench for a few minutes and people-watched.
Nothing too interesting, so we jumped back on our bikes and headed for home.
Blaine went out running errands. I stayed behind to work, expecting to work outside, but it was too bright and I couldn’t see my laptop screen. Bummer!
It’s actually much, much brighter red than this shows!
Brats and potato wedges for dinner. Not sure we could get in a restaurant even if we wanted to . . . .