Hello, God. It's me, Mara.

You know, Lord, the wind! Is it forever the wind? It’s hard to have an excess of praise as the windy air crisps the skin and cracks the lips. It’s not quite that bad right now, but one day it surely felt like the foehn wind that came right out of the book, “Wolf Willow’ by Wallace Stegner, which we quote:

“The wind that hundreds of miles to the west started up the mountains warm and wet had dropped its moisture on the heights and then came down on our side, totally wrung dry … dry and gaining temperature at the rate of one degree for every 400 feet of altitude lost, as one weather man mentioned. It hits the plains and comes across like the breath of a blowtorch. There is no cloud, not a one, to cut off the sun and relieve the glare even for a minute. The horizons crawl with mirages.”

Searing wind, scorching sky, tormented and heat-warped light — confirmed by the foehn wind, (the warm dry wind blowing down the side of a mountain). But, thankfully, not every day is like that. A couple friends were out walking and mentioned that they noticed that they/we have the best of both, a great view of the mountains and plains and a valley on the other three sides. The golden fields that just recently were waving with their grain and the pastureland make up the rest of the plains. What a beautiful sight and no wind that day. They/we don’t live in town or the country, they teased, “We just live on the edge of either.” That’s really neat. We felt like singing praises to Your name, Lord. If we’d paused to look a bit harder, we’d have seen all sorts of miracles that You’ve done. Thank You, Lord for a lovely day — with no wind.

Love, Mara.