Hiding from the sun

I know how to make my next million. I will share it with you so that one of you entrepreneur types will go develop one, and have me test it. If it works, I get to keep it, and you go make your fortune. I need an easily removable/attachable umbrella or canopy for my kayak. Remember, you may take my idea and run with it, but I get your prototype, preferably this week.

Yesterday, I took my new kayak to the Catawba River. This kayak is so much easier to paddle than my inflatable one that I went upriver against the current for an hour and wasn't tired. I didn't want to turn around, but the sun was beating down on me. The limiting factor is often the sun. That, and visions of a huge lunch...which I had not packed and should have. So while I kayaked with sweat dribbling off my nose and stomach growling, I thought about how to concoct my sun shade. The problem with my kayak is the edge around the cockpit is rounded and thick. My chair umbrella with the clamp can't clamp it. I looked on line for kayak canopies but they cost more than the kayak, and require hardware that necessitates drilling into my kayak. It seems to me there must be a cheap and easy solution.

While I was musing, an osprey flew overhead and then plummeted straight down into the water, not twenty feet from me. With a splash, it rose again, a fish in its talons. Right on its tail, as it flew off with the fish wriggling beneath it, a Great Blue Heron flew by, flapping its enormous wings. A turtle popped up right beside me, looked at me in surprise, and ducked back underwater. If I had sunshade, I might never leave this river, I thought.

I have been working through the book of Hosea in my daily Bible reading. That book always disturbs me. Poor Hosea is told that he must go marry a prostitute, Gomer, and make her his wife knowing she will betray and leave him. He must then go find her and take her back. It is a most heart breaking picture of God in His relentless pursuit of us. Despite our perpetual unfaithfulness and snubbing of God's love, He follows us doggedly. He showers us with rivers teeming with life and beauty, and surrounds us with the music of all creation, and we act as though it were not a gift, an offering, a plea to paddle as fast as we can back to Him. Too often, we are shielding ourselves from the Son, the very source of Life. And God is still beckoning, urging us, and keeping watch at the dock at the end of the river.

Hosea 2:23 (NIV)
I will plant her for myself in the land; I will show my love to the one I called ‘Not my loved one. ’ I will say to those called ‘Not my people, ’ ‘You are my people’; and they will say, ‘You are my God.



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