JOY ALONG THE WAY: MORE THOUGHTS FOR THE LENTEN SEASON

"... a little lower than the angels." Psalm 8:5

The Taum Sauk Reservoir, a hydroelectric pumped-storage power plant is a marvel of engineering. Simply put, the top of a 1,550-foot-high Ozark mountain was sliced off, the rocky insides partially blasted out to form a 55-acre, concrete-lined and rimmed bowl that holds 1.5 billion gallons of water. Through a shaft and tunnel the water is released to the base of the mountain where its power operates turbines. The water then flows off and is retained in a lower reservoir, made by damming a river, and is pumped back up to the top of the mountain, over and over as needed.

I was there, looking over the rim of the lofty reservoir with other tourists, listening and contributing to the conversation. "They say the water falls with such force it operates the turbines at 200 revolutions per minute." "It is pumped back up at night when electrical demand is low." "What ingenuity!" "How terribly smart!" "Is there anything man can't do?"

A young, sweat-shirted lad was in the group looking over the vast mountaintop lake. A parent was trying to make him see and understand the immensity of the project. "Just think, son, what man has done here."

The boy, no doubt, to show that he was interested, pulled an exploded bubble gum from his nose and asked, "Who made the water?"

*****

"He is the Stone that some will stumble over ... they will fall ... But you are not like that ... once you knew very little of God's kindness, now your very lives have been changed by it." 1 Peter 2:8-9

My little friend looked closely at the Heavenly Blue morning glory vines that were winding up the strings I had provided for them.

"Do they twist around the string like this by themselves or do you twist em?" she asked.

"They do it themselves," I said. "They're always reaching for the light like all growing things, and the light is always there." I motioned vaguely toward the sunlit sky.

"What would happen if I unwound one a little bit and wound it back, going downward?"

"Try it and see," I said.

Very carefully, with her small fingers, she did as she had purposed and we went on to other things.

In a few days she returned to see what had happened. The vines had reached the top of the porch roof and many blue trumped-flared flowers were now in bloom. She found the vine she had tinkered with. "Look," she said, her voice full of excitement. "The vine turned around and went back up. Gee, even where I stumbled it, it looks stronger."

And, indeed, it was. The crisscrossing of its turn-around had reinforced the slender vine.

We sat in the nearby porch swing, put little blue trumpet-shaped flowers to our mouths and made up things we thought the flowers might say if they could talk.

I especially liked it when she walked to the edge of the porch, turned her trumpet skyward and said, "I thank the light that always pulls me back up, even when I'm stumbled."

REJOICE!

Jean Bell Mosley is an author and long-time resident of Cape Girardeau.