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The very elements that create beauty can make a place deadly.

How quickly good things can go bad.

The drive into Southern California's San Bernardino Mountains starts out calmly enough. It is a picture-postcard setting. A small creek meandering the valley. Strong, silent walls of stone, oak, and cedar, keeping watch, high and away. We feel safe. No cause for worry or hurry. We meander, with the creek, into camp.

We pay our welcome dues at the conference center, stand in the sliver of a creek bed, just to get the feel of the place, then head for a nap in our cabin, some 50 yards away. Within minutes the rain begins. We are lulled to sleep by the sound. Even in the rain, the world seems at peace.

But not for long.

I first heard the rumble, like a freight train storming the creek bed. We open our door and see the torrent—not 50 yards away. What was a sliver of a creek just moments ago now picks up trees and boulders three feet wide. Before it is all over, 18 houses, a mile up canyon, have been swept away and one life has been lost. We spend the next two days listening to the roar of rescue helicopters overhead and watching a steady stream of emergency vehicles make their way up the mountain road.

"That such beauty could turn on us so," I say to my husband next morning as we walk up the hill to breakfast. Today the stream is back in place. The sun beams out of a clear blue sky. And the canyon walls reign serene above it all.

We stop and survey the scene. And wonder at the fact that the very elements that create such beauty are the very elements that make the place so deadly.

It is also a warning about life. My greatest strength can also become my greatest cause for disaster. But for my alertness to the possibility. But for the grace of God.

Copyright © 1999 by the author or Christianity Today International/Today's Christian magazine (formerly Christian Reader).
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