Psalm 90:10 "The days of our years are three-score
years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is
their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away."
Yesterday we drove to the
town of Chemainus, down to the beach where there was a lovely breeze
and an outgoing tide. In the Cowichan Valley where we live it was very hot,
almost 90 degrees, and so this breeze was very welcome. We sat on a log which was shaded by a large
tree, enjoying the relief from the oppressive heat back home.
Offshore there is a
lighthouse on a rocky knoll and we watched as a group of people set out to walk
to it. If it was an incoming tide, this
would have been a very dangerous thing to do as they had small children with
them who could walk most of the way but had to be carried the rest of the way.
Had the tide been incoming, they would have been trapped. One of the men was carrying what looked like
a large blow-up chair and husband and I assumed that they were going to set out
blankets and spend some time on the rocks which had no shade at all. We couldn't have been more wrong. Not long after they all reached the rocks and had gathered together, we saw a huge dragon-fly climbing up in
the sky and we thought it was a kite, because one of the men appeared to be
holding a large container where the string would be. But then the dragon-fly got too far away to be a
kite, and we saw that it was a helium balloon shaped like a dragon-fly. It flew higher, over the trees and towards
the town of Chemainus. Then the
container turned out to be a large red heart-shaped helium balloon which
climbed into the sky and followed after the dragon-fly. There was another balloon as well, but it was
smaller and darker, I don't know what it was.
After the balloons
were released, the group of adults and children made their way back to the
shore and husband and I left the beach and drove home. I wondered what this balloon-releasing meant. That was certainly the intention of the trip
out to the rocky knoll, it seemed rather a long way to walk to entertain children, and it was the adults that released the balloons, not the children. I came to the conclusion that it was a memorial to
someone who had recently passed away, or perhaps a memorial to someone who had
passed away years ago. At any rate, when I got home I looked up "fly
away" at Blue Letter Bible and settled on Psalm 90:10 "The days of
our years are three-score years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be
fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut
off, and we fly away."
