The Morning Is Glorious

It's a beautiful morning. The sun is shining, the zinnias and sunflowers and coneflowers and mallows and lilies and beebalm and snapdragons and marigolds and black-eyed susans and geraniums and begonias and pansies are blooming, leaves raised to the sun, processing life. Also the cosmos and the morning glories. The cosmos is (and are) amazing, and the morning is indeed glorious. This is a safe and peaceful place.

It's been about a month since we visited Denali National Park.
We rode the tour bus to and from Fish Creek, about six hours.
During that trip, we saw
a woman slice her knee badly while hiking on loose rock,
six people make an emergency entrance onto our bus
due to a close encounter with a grizzly,
a woman get stranded on a gravel bar due to rapidly rising water,
three hikers in shorts and t-shirts shiver uncontrollably,
and a man nearly drive off a steep embankment.
Five incidents
in six hours
on one of many buses
in one of many places
on one of many days.
(There is a multiplication possibility here.)
Denali was a peaceful place, but not a safe place.

And yet, what is peace? What is safety?
In the past week, a Minnesota bridge collapsed.
An earthquake devastated coastal Peru.
There were local fatal car accidents,
fires,
diseases.
Peace and safety are an illusion.
Our peace and safety are only found
in feeling the fingerprints of God on our lives each moment.

Sue