July 7, 2025 - Good Morning. It’s Monday, July 7.
Texas is a big, big state. El Paso is closer to San Diego, California than it is to Texarkana. Dallas-Fort Worth Airport is larger than Manhattan. The entire state of Rhode Island could fit inside the King Ranch. Texas is so huge that it has at least seven distinct geographical regions. From the rugged Trans-Pecos mountains of West Texas to the verdant Piney Woods here in East Texas. From the majestic Palo Duro Canyon in the Panhandle to the beautiful Padre Island beaches on the Gulf Coast. The Lone Star State has a little bit - or a lot - of everything.
But perhaps the most beautiful part of our state is at its center, an area called the Hill Country. When the early Texas settlers first saw it, they wrote back to their families in Tennessee and Kentucky, describing it as “paradise”. Growing up, my family spent every summer vacationing in New Braunfels on the lovely Comal River. The Comal is a quiet, cool (72 degrees) tributary of the much larger Guadalupe - the site of this past weekend’s horrifying disaster.
It was, in the most negative sense, a “perfect storm”. Freak amounts of rain, coming in the dead of night, on Independence Day Friday, the beginning of a 4th of July weekend. An area that attracts thousands and thousands of visitors, dotted with resorts and RV parks and youth camps. By this morning, the confirmed death toll had risen to 81, with many still missing, many of them children. These words do not adequately describe this catastrophe. It is an indescribable loss.
This morning our hearts go out and our prayers go up. And we claim the promise found in Psalm 34:18 - “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted, and saves those with a crushed spirit.”
Meet you back here tomorrow,
David
cindertex50@yahoo.com
