Sinkhole

I never knew that Arizona had sink holes.  Actually, I never even knew what one was until I looked it up.  I did not understand what caused them or what was why they happened.  Now, it is on the news.  We have our very own sink hole.  The Sinkhole is on the 89A.  That is a small highway that goes up past the Grand Canyon.  It heads off through the Navajo reservation and up into Page by Lake Powell.  It is a very secluded area.  The sink hole happened just past the turnoff toward Lee's Ferry on the Colorado River.  This pretty much isolates the city of Page.  The closest way to get to it takes three hours longer than before.  It is not an easy journey right now, and they don't know when the road will be opened again.  
So what exactly is a sinkhole, and what caused it to appear suddenly in this quiet Arizona desert?

“A sinkhole is basically a closed depression that forms in the ground,” said David Weary, a research geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. “The simple explanation is that the ground surface falls into a void.”

But what causes that void? Weary says there a both natural and man-made triggers.

“Usually you get a collapse because something occurred that transported the material, creating the void that the sinkhole falls into,” Weary said. “If there’s a cave underground filled with soil and sediment and you get an episode of high rainfall or a change in groundwater flow, the dirt that filled the void will be hollowed. Once it hollows out close to the ground surface, it becomes thin enough that it can’t support what is on top of it and it falls in"

Life has a lot of sinkholes in it, and they are both natural and also man made.  Sometimes, things just happen, life happens.  You fall and break an arm, you get in a wreck, you lose your job.  Some things we really can't control.  We just have to push on and hope that Some Else has it all under control.  

Other sinkholes are man-made.  We make bad choices, someone else makes bad choices, we give up, turn our backs and just quit trying.  Sinkholes keep us from moving forward if we let them.  They make the road appear more difficult.  They cause delays and frustrations.  They cause us to go back in order to move forward.  

Yet, there is someone who can heal all our wounds, who can repair all the sink holes, who can forgive our wrongs and make us whole again.  There is Some One who can change our hearts and bring us Home once again.  

Sometimes, it helps to look around us and see the reminders in the little things.  Even in the sinkholes of our lives.  

The struggle of life is one of our greatest blessings.

It makes us patient, sensitive, and Godlike. 

It teaches us that although the world is full of suffering, 

it is also full of the overcoming of it.

Helen Keller