Trying to Breathe
Friday, June 6, 2025
Enveloped by the Spirit
Beautiful Sunsets, But!
Hoping the Smoke Will Go and Stay Away,
And Fires, too!
Psalm 125:2
As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds his people, from this time on and forevermore.
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John 17:15
I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one.
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Words of Grace for Today –
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In Camp there is always more work to do than time, energy, and opportunity. I burn wood for heat. The insulation is very poor, so I call the wood stove, the monster, since it consumes huge amounts of wood each day. All that wood needs to be located as standing dead trees, or at least in the air so they have not soaked up water. Then each log needs to be cut and hauled back to camp and stacked and covered. The camp is completely jerry-rigged, so much of it good for only a year at most. Every spring so much needs to be torn apart and rebuilt. But a few weeks after it’s warm enough to tear things apart, the bugs invade and make the work so much harder, and it often results with mosquitoes drawing blood while I sleep. The time-window to work hard and fast is short.
It’s getting harder as I get older to get enough done. I try to work harder than it feels I can, and work smarter than I ever have before.
With the wildfires and their smoke these past few years, the time that I can work outside is taken from me, unpredictably. It starts right in that time when the weather is warming up and before the bugs really take over.
It comes down to being able to work without getting eaten by mosquitoes and black flies, being able to breathe clean air, being able to work without suffering heat exhaustion.
How thankful I am when, though the smoke closes visibility down to less than 2 km, the solar power is enough to run the small air purifier inside. At least a small area inside provides breathable air. When it gets hot out that small camper can really heat up, too. It takes away my ability to work, to think, to plan how to be smart.
What great relief and joy it is, after days of heavy smoke and heat, when a cooling rain arrives, even when it’s a thunderstorm that delivers slushy ice followed by torrents of water. The cool clear air beckons, come bask in this wonder. It may not last long. Windows and vents are opened, inside is refreshed. I can think again.
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Now that is being in the world, the world as it is today, weather extremes of last year becoming the norms of this year,
with all the challenges to life those new extremes dump on us.
Like wildfires galore, like never seen before, and smoke that’ll take your breath (and life) away.
We pray for the people in BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, and other places, who have been evacuated, who have lost their homes and their communities, and all the people whose lives have been disrupted by smoke that simply takes away your breath. May God help us all help each other survive these, and all the wildfires and smoke to come.
While fire will do us in in minutes, smoke will do us in bit by bit over days, months and even years, planting seeds for cancer in us.
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so in the clear air
we give God thanks.
Thanks for life in this world,
and blessings that life may continue, day after day.