Our Sovereign God Still Reigns

Last Sunday morning, in a campground outside Yosemite NP, we awoke in the predawn twilight to the sound of gunfire immediately overhead. A late season, unexpected super soggy snow fluttered down in silver-dollar-sized wafers on the newly leafed out deciduous trees surrounding our portable abode. The battlefield sounds of breaking tree limbs were followed by the swoosh of limbs brushing the sides of our trailer on their way to the ground, or worse, our whole little house shuddering as branches hit the roof. I hurriedly dressed and climbed upon the roof to clear it of limbs and check for damage and to grab drooping snow-laden tree branches still attached to shake the snow off them—and on to me—before the weight could break them. Miraculously, there was no damage to our RV and I did not slip off the roof.

Five days earlier, in a lakeside campground a little further down this Sierra Nevada mountainside, we sat out a short violent afternoon rainstorm, watching through our dinette window as driving rain fell nearly horizontally. A 25-foot tall oak tree about six feet from our window blew down before our eyes. Had it fallen another 120 degrees clockwise, we would have been homeless and perhaps hurting. Add all this to our experience in the Mojave a few weeks, where we endured a night of rocking and rolling and prayer without ceasing in turbulent winds in excess of 50 knots (they felt worse—I’m guessing), and you might say California has not been kind to these two RV’ers. Or you could say that our sovereign God still reigns and you would share my conviction!

Actually we feel blessed. We had three sunny and high 60’s days in magnificent Yosemite NP, where it snowed two days before and two days after we were there. We have fallen in love with the Sierra Nevada Mountains even though, as Coloradans, we are mighty hard to please when it comes to purple mountain majesty. The last two days we’ve been waiting out snowfall up in Sequoia NP, biding our time in a lovely COE campsite at Horseshoe Bend CG on the banks of Lake Kaweah. It is so easy to wait on the Lord when you have no deadlines! (A strong internet signal is also helpful.) With a sunny and high 60 degree day today in Sequoia NP, and the same forecast for two more days, we’re pulling up stakes and towing our home up to the banks of the roaring Kaweah River inside the park. It will be several miles beyond the nearest internet signal, but our Lord will make his presence known there among the lush forest, rushing water, blooming Nolina (similar to yucca), gigantic 2000-year-old Sequoias and heart-palpitating snow-capped vistas of the Sierra Nevada’s. No one needs more than that. And if the weather man is wrong and it snows and/or blows while we are there, well, our sovereign God still reigns. The General Sherman Sequoia, earth’s largest tree and the star of the Park, has been withstanding the vicissitudes of onshore Pacific weather on the Sierra Nevada’s western slopes for 2,200 years, and it will stand not one minute more nor less than God wills. Neither will I.

Advertisement