The Hope of the Sunflower Patch

I was delighted to see this little glimpse of yellow peeking out of the sunflower patch yesterday morning as Abby and I returned from our morning walk. Dwayne planted his sunflowers late this year, around the first of July, because this land was cold and wet through June. So his sunflowers are coming up and opening up later than usual.
This either will be a good thing -- we'll have sunflowers into October -- or we won't have many sunflowers at all.

The sunflowers always remind me of the flooding in and around Calgary in June of 2013, and how afterwards, people planted sunflowers because they clean the soil. I didn't know that; now sunflowers are the other heroes, the aftermath heroes, of flooding.

I sat down to watch the news after supper tonight and I started to cry as I looked at houses with water above window ledges, and cars submerged, and people carrying their dogs in their arms, and old women in a nursing home sitting in recliners and wheelchairs with water at chest level.
Whenever these catastrophes happen, whether it's forest fire or flooding, Dwayne and I talk about if it could happen here and what we would do if it did. Even if the chance is remote, and it is, we're more likely to have a tree blow down on our house than lose it in a forest fire, I like to talk about possibilities and reactions.
I can't imagine going to bed one night believing you're on high enough ground that the rain won't fill your home only to wake up to find your entire neighbourhood is afloat, and your neighbours in danger. It reminds me of the fire in Fort McMurray last year, when most people didn't have time to pack, or plan, or even think about what they would do; they just had time to grab their kids, their pets, a purse, and get out.

I don't pray anymore; I don't believe God is an interventionist, I don't believe God saves only certain people. I do believe in the good people: the strangers rescuing strangers, the neighbours helping neighbours, the men and women who leave their homes in their filled boats then return with their empty boats to help others, the reporters who are standing knee deep in the water covering a roadway in order to let us know what's going on, how long this is going to last, what we can do, how we can help.
Where we can send money. 
When we can plant sunflower seeds.