On our recent camping trip we had a lot of wildlife for company.  Yet it was neither frightening nor bothersome.  The only animal we saw besides the usual birds and squirrels that lived in the campground itself was a young raccoon who moseyed up to the woodpile, so interested in the spot where Keith had slung some cold coffee that he didn’t see us until about the same time we saw him.  All of us were startled and he fled for cover.  Yet I am positive we had much more company out in the woods.
            If I did not see them, how do I know?  Because as we hiked the park’s fifteen miles of trails over the next four days, we saw their tracks: the cloven hoof prints of many deer, the tiny handprints of other raccoons, the small padded paws of bobcats, and the deep, heavy prints of wild boars, along with places they had torn up the ground rooting and wallowing.  There were not just a few of these tracks either.  We saw far more animal tracks than people tracks on our daily hikes.
            I bet you believe me now, don’t you?  Yet God’s fingerprints are all over this world of ours and it seems that every year fewer people believe in Him.  They might as well believe that animals don’t exist in the forest; it would make about as much sense. 
            But people have been behaving this way for thousands of years. I am reminded of Moses performing his signs before Pharaoh.  The Egyptian ruler did not want to believe in Jehovah as the one true God.  He had his many magicians replicate Moses’ signs with their tricks.  Finally though, they reached a point where they could not do so. 
            “This,” they said to Pharaoh, “is the finger of God.”
            Would that men would be so honest today.
 
For the invisible things of Him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even His everlasting power and divinity; that they may without excuse, because that knowing God, they glorified Him not as God, neither gave thanks, but became vain in their reasonings and their senseless heart was darkened.  Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man, and of birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things.  Wherefore God gave them up…Rom 1:20-24.
 
Dene Ward

We discovered Blackwater River State Park well over a decade ago, right after it had been renovated.  It is a small park set on "the last white sand river in the country," situated in the Florida Panhandle a few miles north of I-10, and about 30 miles east of Pensacola.  We have stayed there twice now, both times in the winter, and enjoyed it both times.  While we have had only a few encounters with wildlife in our thirty-five years of camping, one of the most memorable occurred there.

              As usual that night, we left our warm campfire about 10 pm, and headed for the tent and the double sleeping bag—the more body heat the better in the winter, even in Florida.  About 2 am I woke up to a clattering in our screen tent, which we had set up over the picnic table so we would always have a place out of the rain.  I shook Keith awake.  Without his hearing aids he is totally deaf.  He read my lips with the aid of a flashlight, but thought I said there was someone out there, when I said something.  He unzipped the tent and made some sort of macho noise, then pulled on his coat and went out with the flashlight.  Meanwhile I was hearing the noise from the screen tent over the table, as he walked around the truck looking for a person.  I was thinking, "No, no, no--in the screen!"  But even yelling it would not have gotten through to him and would have wakened the entire campground.

              So he came back to our tent and when he stuck his head back in, I mouthed, "In the screen," and pointed, so he went, and sure enough we had forgotten to put our garbage bag in the back of the truck, and it was lying on the ground, torn open.  He knew it was a coon then, and took the bag and put it on top of the truck cab because he had not taken a truck key with him out of the tent, and came back to bed.

              Not five minutes later, I heard ka-whump! clatter, clatter!, and knew that the big, blue, Rubbermaid box that holds our pots and pans had been knocked off the bench of the picnic table, so I whapped Keith again and said, "It's ba-ack."  So he went back out and this time put the garbage bag totally inside the back of the truck before heading to the screen and finding the pot box, upended, but still sealed, on the ground.  He searched all around but saw no coon.  He decided to close up the propane stove because it was possible that some grease had spilled in there and was drawing the coon with the smell, though it had not come any other night.

              We had our biggest pot, a very thin, light aluminum 3 quart pot on top of it from boiling our evening coffee water.  The thing probably did not cost $5.00 thirty years ago, that's how light it was, just a layer or two thicker than aluminum foil.  I think my morning mug of coffee weighs more.  He leaned over and picked up the pot with one hand and closed the stove with the other. Just as he came up on one side of the table, the coon did a chin up on the other side so they were facing one another nose to nose in the starlight.  He was so startled he didn't think at all, just went wham! with that flimsy little pot.  The coon scrambled trying to get a purchase on the table and finally got up and over it, with Keith getting another lick or two in as it got away.  Actually he is lucky.  You will never see anything quite as vicious as a frightened or angry coon. 

               Well, the coon kept going and never did come back that night, but he would have the next if we had stayed a day longer.  It isn’t that coons are all that smart, it's that they are persistent.  My pot now has a perfect impression of a coon head in the bottom of it and we would have been happy to use it again.  It certainly wasn't going to sit flat on the stovetop any longer.
  
            That is exactly how we need to approach Satan.  This is not a game.  This is not some cute, cuddly little animal, but a vicious brute who wants nothing less than your destruction.  I've heard him laughed about too often.  I have seen the world treat him as a myth and anyone who believes in the war between good and evil called a superstitious fool.  Too many times I have seen Christians shamed by their friends in the world into laughing about him too.  It's time to get serious about the Enemy.  He is persistent—he will not stop until you have laid down your pot in either victory or defeat.  Your persistence must match his, chasing him away again and again.

              If you don't have a pot with an impression of Satan's head in it, you haven't been fighting hard enough.  It needs to be hanging on your wall like a trophy, but easy enough to get down and use again.  Giving in is not an option—not if you expect to survive till the morning.
 
Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God. By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother. (1John 3:8-10).
 
Dene Ward

We have a secret for lighting fires in a flash, no pun intended.  It's fat lighter.  It actually isn't much of a secret if you were born in the country or do a lot of camping.  Also known as fatwood, lighter wood, lighter knot, pitch pine etc., it is a resin-rich piece of wood that lights as well, or better, than paper.  Remember all those torches people carry in the old, black and white movies?  That's a piece of fat lighter.

              Whenever a conifer is injured, the resin in it, rushes to the injury site to seal the wound.  That section of the tree then becomes resin-rich.  When the tree is cut up, you will see the difference in the wood, a shiny reddish hue, and you will smell it instantly.  Though there are no chemicals or petroleum in it, that is exactly how it smells.  The resin usually concentrates in the knots and in the base of the tree.  If it is cut down or felled by storm or disease, the remaining stump will usually be full of resin. 

              Living in the piney woods of North Florida, we have an almost endless supply of fat lighter.  Besides what we find on our own property, a neighbor always saves the stumps for us when he clears land.  We can start a fire with a match and a sliver of fat lighter in about 10 seconds, assuming we have the twigs and logs to lay on top ready at hand.  We have at least a ten year supply right now, despite using it profligately just so we can sit by a fire on cool mornings or evenings.  I priced it on Amazon and found 10lbs for $30 plus shipping.  We could finance a year or two of our retirement with the fat lighter lying on our property.

              But not all fat lighter is created equal.  Some is richer (fatter) than others, which became quite apparent a few mornings ago as we sat there shivering in our pjs waiting for the fire to get going. 

               Keith actually used two small pieces.  The first lit immediately with a strong bright blaze.  He set it in the ashes and reached for the second.  It would not light quickly, but took most of a whole match to finally start.  Even then it was a meager flame.  A little exasperated, he lay it next to the first piece and it suddenly shone much brighter.  After a few seconds, he tried to move it away and it immediately began sputtering and smoking, but put it back by the richer piece and it once again burned brightly.  At that point he simply began adding twigs, then limbs, then larger logs.  It had been about five minutes and he moved that second piece of lighter back to the other side of the fire.  Then and only then did the flame keep going and actually start the fire on that end.  As I said, some pieces are richer in resin than others.

               If Jesus were to walk the North Florida woods, he would probably tell a parable about far lighter, and the point might be this.  Some of us are richer in resin than others.  Some of us can burn brightly even when we stand alone.  But others of us need a little help.  Maybe we are followers instead of leaders.  Maybe we are more timid.  Whatever the reason, we do just fine when we are surrounded by our brethren, but when all that support leaves us, we sputter and smoke and maybe the flame goes out completely.

              We must each examine ourselves to know what we are made of.  If you cannot see, and admit, that you might not be as rich in resin as others, you will inevitably put yourself into a position that leaves you weak and alone and unable to shine the light for the Lord.  It takes an awful lot of resin to stand alone day after day after day, especially when you face trials in your life.  Some people have it, but it is no shame to recognize when you do not.  What is a shame is to put your soul in danger.  Maybe someday after you have stood with a strong group for a long while, watching how they do it, learning and growing, you will finally be able to keep the fire going on your own.  In fact, that is probably the case.  God expects, and allows for, growth.

               And if you are good and "fat," then look out for the ones who are not.  Don't leave them sputtering alone in the dark.  Shine the light to show them how.  Stand as close as you need to help that flame get going on its own.  A piece of fat lighter, no matter how rich, is no good to anyone if it doesn't start a fire.
 
Do all things without grumbling or disputing, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, Phil 2:14-15
 
Dene Ward

One morning on a camping trip to Stone Mountain Park in Georgia, we were awakened by acorn shells gently falling from the tree above us onto the taut surface of our tent.  A squirrel had picked that limb overhead as his breakfast counter.  In the early morning gray of pre-dawn it was mildly irritating—this was supposed to be a vacation, after all, sleeping in was part of the deal—but when you choose an outdoor venue for your vacation, you realize that encounters with nature should be expected.

              I was reminded of that trip this morning.  Our home sits under some monstrous live oaks.  They deliver cooling, and budget-saving, shade in the summer, but in the fall, they provide a handy pantry for the local fauna.  We have done our best to shoo those varmints away for the sake of the aviary we have set up around us, both feeders and houses.  That means more acorns remain to fall on our metal roof.

              About six-thirty, when the morning breezes pick up, the barrage began.  I do not know if it is the metal or if our acorns just happen to be heavier or larger than the average acorn, but it did not sound like pieces of shell gently falling from a limb above—it sounded like a bunch of monkeys throwing coconuts as hard as they could just to see what sort of trouble they could cause.  We were up early on a Saturday morning whether we wanted to be or not.

              I have some brethren like that.  Sometimes things need to be said, granted.  Souls are at stake.  The Word of God must be defended.  But do we have to throw coconuts at six AM?  Does a preacher need to be castigated on the church house doorstep in front of visitors from the community and new converts when we disagree with a sermon?  Do we need to waylay a sister at a potluck where, even in the corner of the room, everyone can see what's going on—especially if she runs out the door crying? 

               When we do what has to be done, some acorn pieces will inevitably fall on the tent roof and wake people up—but that's the point, isn't it?  Waking them up, not beating them down.  If time and opportunity are short we may need to take a deep breath and do what needs to be done no matter what others may think, but hurling coconuts as hard as possible just to cause trouble is a far cry from the empathy that does its best to reach another's heart with as little collateral damage as possible.  That is why so many preachers will dare to remind the wayward children at a funeral, "Your mother wants nothing more than to be with you again in Eternity.  Look at yourself and do what you need to do to make that happen."  Most of the time, the mothers have asked those preachers to say just that.  They are not monkeys with coconuts; they are doing their best to be a squirrel with an acorn.

              So today, ask yourself why you do what you do.  Are you really concerned for souls, or do you just want to be the center of controversy, the one who gets to show that sinner what's what?  Are you quietly eating your acorns, or are you just a monkey throwing coconuts as hard as you can?
 
Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself. Gal 6:1-3
 
Dene Ward

The Environmental Protection Agency was established on December 2, 1970, at the call of President Richard Nixon to seriously address, at a Federal level, the problems arising from factory pollutants, automobile emissions, overuse of pesticides, dangerous practices in waste disposal, and oil spills.  Most of us have benefited from its oversight in areas of which we are not even aware.  But occasionally, they do seem to get a little unreasonable, in the same ways as anyone who tries to make rules in places they have never been and do not understand.

            Campgrounds, for example, have a lot of aggravating rules.  Some of them are just plain ridiculous, obviously made by people who sit behind a desk and have never camped in their lives.  Yet, I understand the problem.  Too many thoughtless people have no concept of picking up after themselves while being careful where they dump things. 

              Most state parks have a place to dump “gray water.”  We aren’t talking about raw sewage.  Gray water, as defined, includes the dishpan of water you washed your dishes in.  Ever carry a couple gallons of water 500 yards in an awkward dishpan you must hold out in front of you, trying not to slosh it all over yourself in the cold?  Nearly impossible.  And who, living in the country, doesn’t know that wash water works wonders on the blueberries and flower beds?  At least the last park we stayed at had dispensed with the gray water rule.

              I think some of these things bother me because, as country people, we are always green.  We are careful what gets dumped where, even if it means having to load it up and cart it off to the landfill ourselves; you don’t want your groundwater polluted, especially uphill from the well.  We rotate crops.  We even rotate garden spots. We use twigs to dissuade cutworms rather than plastic rings or metal nails. We mulch with the leaves from our live oaks, which we then turn under to enrich the ground after the garden is spent.  We dump the ashes from the woodstove into the fallow garden.  I am sure Keith could add even more to this list.

              God expects his people to be “green.”  Good stewardship of his gifts has always been his expectation, from our abilities to the gospel itself.  You can even find sewage disposal rules in the Law.  Cruelty to animals was punished under the Old Covenant.  That same principle of stewardship follows into the New.

              At the same time, God said, “Have dominion over [the earth] and subdue [the animals],” Gen 1:28.  He said to eat of the plants and the animals, 1:29; 9:3.  God meant this to be a place we used for our survival, not a zoological and botanical garden where nothing can be touched.  When we carefully use the resources of the earth, it will continue to furnish us with the things we need.  So we eat sustainable seafood.  We hunt in season, and eat the meat we bring home.  We raise and eat animals fed with garden refuse.  We carefully sow and reap so the ground will continue to be arable.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with any of that.

              Sometimes, though, the people who claim to be green are no longer flesh-colored (in all its assorted hues).  They care more for animals than people.  I know that is true when I see a “Save the Whales” bumper sticker on the same car touting “The Right to Choose.”  Let’s save the animals, but the babies are fair game.

              Shades of Romans 1--Paul speaks of the Gentiles who had rejected Jehovah throughout the ancient days and eventually arrived at the point that they “worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator” 1:25.  Our culture has come dangerously close to that.  The environment has become the cause du jour, and while I certainly agree that we should care for the beautiful home God gave us and not be cruel to animals, it is because I am grateful to the God who made them for me, not because I have less regard for humans.  I have always been that way, not just recently, yet I still know that people are more important than sea turtles, and unborn children more so than polar bears.

              So let’s be green, just as God has always expected—but let’s be flesh-colored too, caring about the people, and their souls even more than the animals.  And let us also be as white as snow—an obedient people who worship and serve the God who created it all.
 
From your lofty abode you water the mountains; the earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work. You cause the grass to grow for the livestock and plants for man to cultivate, that he may bring forth food from the earth.  The trees of the LORD are watered abundantly, the cedars of Lebanon that he planted. In them the birds build their nests; the stork has her home in the fir trees. The high mountains are for the wild goats; the rocks are a refuge for the rock badgers. The young lions roar for their prey, seeking their food from God. When the sun rises, they steal away and lie down in their dens. Man goes out to his work and to his labor until the evening. O LORD, how manifold are your works! In wisdom have you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures. May the glory of the LORD endure forever; may the LORD rejoice in his works, Psa 104:13,14,16-18,21-24,31.
 
Dene Ward
 

Keith was fiddling with the campfire while I stood behind him shivering.  A pile of twigs lay over two slivers of lighter wood to which he held a match.  Black smoke curled up from the charred wood, which flared briefly then died out—over and over and over.  Suddenly one of the twigs caught and began to burn.  A few minutes later the lighter wood beneath finally began to burn, its thick oily flame blazing brightly.

             “Now that’s something,” he muttered, “when the twigs catch faster than the lighter.”

              Not many are familiar with lighter wood any more.  Also known as pitch pine, this wood contains a high concentration of resin.  The smell is often overpowering, as if you had soaked it in lighter fluid.  When you watch one of those old movies, the torches the mob carries are pieces of lighter wood.  You can’t light a piece of wood with a match—not unless it’s lighter wood, which lights up instantly, like a kerosene-soaked corn cob.

              Except the piece Keith was using that morning.  We had left behind the warmth of an electric-blanket-stuffed double sleeping bag and crawled out into a crisp morning breeze on an open mountaintop, the thermometer next to the tent barely brushing the bottom of thirty degrees.  We needed a fire in a hurry, but what should have been reliable wasn’t, what should have been the first to solve the problem had itself become the problem.

              As I pondered that the rest of the day, my first thought was the Jews’ rejection of Christ.  Sometimes we look at Pentecost and think, “Wow!  Three thousand in one day!  Why can’t we have that kind of success?” 

              Success?  I’ve heard estimates of one to two million Jews in Jerusalem at Pentecost.  Even if it were the lesser number, out of a specially prepared people, 3000 is only three-tenths of one percent—hardly anyone’s definition of “success.”  Here are people who had heard prophecies for centuries, who then had the preaching of John, and ultimately both the teaching and miracles of Jesus, people who should have caught fire and lit the world.  Instead the apostles had to eventually “turn to the Gentiles” who “received them gladly.”

              And today?  Does the church lead the way, or are we so afraid of doing something wrong that we do absolutely nothing?  Have we consigned Christianity to a meetinghouse?  Do our religious friends out-teach us, out-work us (yes, even those who don’t believe in “works-salvation”), and out-love us?  Do we, who should be setting the world on fire, sit and wait for someone else to help the poor, visit the sick and convert the sinners, then pat ourselves on the back because we didn’t do things the wrong way, while ignoring the fact that we didn’t do anything at all?

              And, even closer to home, do we older Christians lead the way in our zeal for knowing God’s word, standing for the truth, yielding our opinions, and serving others, or must we be shamed into it by excited young Christians who, despite our example, understand that being a Christian is more about what we do than what we say?

              It’s disgraceful when the twigs catch fire before the lighter wood.
 
And let us consider how to stir one another up to love and good works, Heb 10:24.
 
Dene Ward
 

Keith grew up in an old farmhouse on a hill in the Ozarks--no running water, a light bulb dangling in each room, and for heat, a woodstove in the kitchen and a fireplace in the living room.  The kids slept in the unfinished (and un-insulated) attic.  In the winter they shoved the foot of each bed against the brick chimney that rose through the attic to the roof so they could get whatever warmth might seep out, and they always made sure they were comfortable before his mother laid on the quilts.  She piled so many on he couldn’t move from the weight of them afterward.  So he knows a lot more about getting the heat out of a fire than I do. 
 
             We had a fireplace once in our married life, three years which were also our worst financial span.  We used that fireplace as much for heat as beauty and atmosphere, and to keep the winter fuel bill down. 

              One especially cold evening he stood two large oak logs on end behind the fire, something he remembered from his childhood.  Immediately the heat began pouring into the room instead of shooting up the chimney, and within an hour those logs had coaled up on their fronts, radiating yet more warmth, like the coils of an electric heater.  Because they weren’t actually in the fire, they stood all night long without burning up, and we were much warmer than before.  Backlogs, he called them, reflectors of the heat in front of them, and eventually of the heat they had absorbed.

              We began using them when camping too, once the boys left home and we were no longer consigned to summer camping only.  In October the temperature can drop precipitously in the mountains and even in Florida in January.

              Paul says, Seeing it is God, that said, Light shall shine out of darkness, who shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, 2 Corinthians 4:6.  He and the other apostles reflected the glory of God to their listeners.  He called it “a treasure in our earthen vessels…of God and not from ourselves,” v 7.  God must have seen in those men a clean and shining surface to reflect His glory or He never would have chosen them.

              Earlier in the chapter Paul speaks about people who are so blinded by “the god of this world” that they cannot see the light.  Do you think God can be reflected in people who are materialistic and unspiritual?  Do you think His love will be emanated by those who are unkind and impatient, unforgiving and lacking in compassion?  Can we mirror His glory when we are tarnished by an impure lifestyle?

              The back logs we used did nothing in an empty fireplace or fire ring.  They only functioned when they stood behind the fire, soaking up its heat, turning the same colors as the coals themselves, and exuding their warmth from all they had absorbed.  We will never truly be “the image of God” if we are not standing next to Him, soaking up His word and the glory it reveals about Him. 

              We must become back logs, reflecting God’s glory just as those apostles did, realizing it is not we who shine, but He who shines forth from us.  Like those logs, we should eventually change, so that the reflection becomes truer and the image clearer in every word and every deed, and in every place.
 
But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit, 2 Corinthians 3:18.                                                                                    

Dene Ward

When we describe our camping trips, people sigh and say things like, “That sounds heavenly.” 

             We cook over an open fire, the meat caramelized by the flames and flavored by the smoke.  At night we sit by a pile of crackling logs under a black sky of twinkling diamond stars and sip hot chocolate.  In the mornings we cuddle by a fire pulled together from the coals of the night before, and gaze on a view that ought to cost extra—mountain after mountain after green rolling mountain against a blue sky, or wrapped with frothy clouds like lacy boas, or peeking through a fine mist, or shining in the sun, covered with trees sporting all the fall colors along with a few dark evergreens.  We hike through wilderness forests unsullied by human rubbish, watching birds we seldom see flit from limb to limb, coons or deer or bears trundling off in the distance or standing stock still in shock staring at us, tiny rills splashing over rocks into larger brooks running to yet larger creeks and finally to the rivers in the valleys below.  We visit orchards and buy apples straight from the tree, not prettied up for the store, sporting a real blemish here and there, but full of flavor, juicy with a perfect texture.  That evening we peel and slice a skillet full, add butter, sugar and cinnamon, set them on a low flame on the propane camp stove and twenty minutes later eat the best dessert you ever had.

              Then we trot out the other side of camping to our friends:  a day long misty rain that, even inside the screen set up over the table, seeps into your clothes and leaves you shivering; carrying a loaded tote to the bathhouse a few hundred yards up or down a steep hill every time you want to brush your teeth or take a shower; stepping outside the tent in the morning to a thermometer that reads 27 degrees. 

              “I could never do that!” one says.  “I’d be headed for the first Holiday Inn!” another proclaims.  Unfortunately, you don’t get the good part without the bad part.  The good parts often happen after the day-trippers head for the hotel.  Their food doesn’t come close and they pay a whole lot more for it at a restaurant than we did at the grocery store the week before we left.  They see the view once, just for a few minutes before being jostled out of the way by the next person standing behind them at the overlook.  And most hotels would frown on a campfire in their rooms.

              Keith and I are snobs about our camping.  When we camp, we live outdoors.  We don’t hide when the weather turns cold, or even wet—we can’t in a tent.  So we just wrap up and tough it out.  Oh, so superior are we.  But we have our limits too.  You will never find us at a primitive campsite.  You certainly won’t find us at a pioneer campsite.  We want our water spigot and electricity.  How do you think we handle those nights in the 20s?  We handle them with a long outdoor extension cord snaking its way inside the tent zipper to an electric blanket stuffed in the double sleeping bag and a small $15 space heater that, amazingly, raises the tent temperature 20-30 degrees inside.

              So where am I when it comes to Christianity?  Am I sold on the health and wealth gospel?  As long as good things happen to me, I am perfectly willing to believe in God and be faithful to Him.  Do I recognize the need for a little bit of trouble to prove my faith, but NOT full scale persecution or trial?  Have I come through some tough tests and now think so well of myself that I can scream to God, “Enough!” as if I had the right to lay out the terms for my faithfulness?

              The rich young ruler thought he was pretty good.  He had kept the commandments.  But Jesus knew where this fellow drew the line—his wealth.  So that is precisely where Jesus led him. 

              Do we have a line we won’t cross?  Is it possessions, security, health, family stability, friendships, comfort?  Whatever it is, the Lord will make sure you come against that line some day in your life.  You may think you are fine—why I can stay in my tent when it’s 25 degrees out!  What if the thermometer hit zero?  What if it rained, not just one day, but every day?  What if I had no running water, no hot showers, no electric blanket?  Would I pack up and head for the hotel?  Or would I tough it out, knowing the reward was far greater than even the most torturous pain imaginable in this life?

              You can’t run to the hotel and hide when persecution strikes.  You can’t close the RV door and count on riding out the storms of life.  Sometimes God expects you to stay in the tent in the most primitive campsite available.  Sometimes he even takes away the tent.  But you will still have the best refuge anyone could hope for if you make use of it, and when the trial is over, you get to enjoy the good parts that everyone else missed.
 
And another also said, I will follow you, Lord; but first suffer me to bid farewell to them that are at my house. But Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God, Luke 9:61,62.
 
Dene  Ward

Our bird watching has spilled over into our camping trips.  Somewhere along the way it dawned on us that we could see different birds in different areas of the country.  So we began carrying small bags of birdseed and scattering it around the campsites.  I saw my first savannah sparrow at Blackwater River, my first nuthatch at Cloudland Canyon, and on our latest trip, my first dark-eyed junco at Black Rock Mountain.

              That’s not all we saw.  We had laid the seed along the landscaping timbers that both defined the site and kept our little aerie from washing down the mountainside.  As long as we sat fairly still and talked quietly, the little gray birds with the white vests hopped closer and closer down the long chunk of weathered wood, pecking at the free and easy meal.  Suddenly a loud crunch behind us caused the birds to fly.  We turned and there sat a fat gray squirrel enjoying the free meal himself, and much more of it.

              “Shoo!” we yelled simultaneously.  He reached down and pawed another kernel.

              Keith hopped up and spun around his chair, clapping his hands with every “Git!” and every step.  Finally the squirrel hopped away, not nearly as scared as I wished.

              Since he was up anyway, Keith started the cook fire and I walked around the tent toward the back of the truck where we stowed our food supplies.  There on the other side of the tent sat the squirrel, once again noshing on the birdseed.

              “Scat!” I shouted, running right at him.  Again he turned and leisurely hopped away.

              After that we were up and around a bit and he kept his distance.  But soon Keith had stepped back into the woods to pick up some deadfall for a later fire in the evening while he waited for the flame to die down to coals, and I was in the screen tent setting the table and prepping the chops for grilling.  I looked up just in time to see that little marauder headed straight for the open screen door, gently waving in the breeze.  He had bypassed the birdseed and was aiming to score people food.

              Only my clumsiness and advancing years kept me from vaulting the table.  Instead, I ran around it, knocking both knees on the corner of the bench and nearly laming myself in the process, stomping, yelling, clapping, and every other noise I could manage.  For once he showed a little alarm and scooted through the brush surrounding us.

              Keith returned and we both bustled around the tents, the truck, and the fire, cooking and laying out the meal.  Half an hour later we sat down to inch thick, herb-rubbed, wood-grilled pork chops, Spanish rice, and skillet corn and red peppers.  Meanwhile, the squirrel sat down to more birdseed.  He crept up behind Keith, he crept up behind me.  He hopped along the timber behind the fire, then tried the one behind the tent.  Every time Keith jumped up and scared him off.

              After the sixth or seventh time that I touched Keith’s hand and pointed, he hung his head in defeat.  “Let him eat,” he said, ferociously stabbing a fork into his chop and sawing with far more exertion than necessary, “so I can.”

              That’s exactly the way Satan comes after us.  Do you need a Biblical example to believe this?  How about Potiphar’s wife (Genesis 39)?  She appealed to Joseph’s natural appetites first, by far the strongest appeal to a young man.  She made it look rewarding—she was the Master’s wife after all, imagine the extra privileges he might have received.  She spoke to Joseph “day by day,” a constant and growing pressure on him.  Even though he seems to have made it his business to avoid her, finally she managed to catch him alone—now it was even easier to give in.  And boy, did she make him pay when he didn’t.

              Satan is persistent.  He comes from every angle and tries every trick.   Sometimes he comes as often as every few minutes.  He will never give up.  Even just fighting him will cost you—time, comfort, convenience, security, wealth, friends, freedom, maybe even your life.  But if you give up, the cost is even worse.  If you say, “Let him eat,” he will—he will “devour” your eternal soul, every last bite.
 
Be sober, be watchful: your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, prowls about, seeking whom he may devour…Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Wherefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and, having done all, to stand…To that end keep alert with all perseverance…1 Peter 5:8; Ephesians 6:11-13, 18.
 
Dene Ward

Sooner or later it will rain, especially when you choose a season and place so popular you must reserve your spot months in advance and, thus, will not know the forecast.  So at least one day of every camping trip we sit inside the screen we set up over our picnic table waiting it out. 

              On our latest trip we had the highest site in the campground, a thirty degree incline up to a spot carved out of the mountainside, fifty feet higher than the nearest site, overlooking the campers to the south and the small town in the valley east of us.  We had set up the day before and watched the clouds roll in that night, obliterating the bright three-quarter moon, wrapping around us like a shroud.

              The rain began in the night, an intermittent drizzle that found its way through the dense forest canopy in a steady barrage of loud heavy plops on the taut nylon of the tent roof, keeping me awake half the night.  The next day we spent back in the screen in the middle of a mountain top cloud, its mist swirling around us and dripping off the saturated limbs and leaves even between the sporadic showers.  Inside and under cover, the benches we sat on grew cold and dank, seeping into the denim on our legs.  The sweatshirts on our backs felt damp and our shoulders chilled in the air.  The pages in the books we read thickened and curled at the corners in the cool humidity.  The top of the green propane stove at the end of the table beaded with moisture.

              By nightfall it was a pleasure to crawl into a warm dry sleeping bag, to lay our backs on a firm air mattress instead of leaning against the edge of a hard wooden table, facing outward to a smoky campfire we could hardly feel through the screen, that sputtered and sizzled from raindrops and wet wood.  The next morning dawned clear with a blue that can only mean “cold,” and air so crisp it sucked the damp out of everything, including our hands and lips.

              For a few days everything was perfect—hikes in pristine forests, clear views of twinkling lights in the valley below, food cooked over a wood fire, and a sky full of stars over us as we read at night, the red, orange, blue and purple flames of a crackling campfire toasting our toes and legs. 

              But as perfect as it was, do you think I didn’t want to go home eventually?  That I wanted to live out of boxes forever?  That there wouldn’t come another day, or even week of rain, or maybe a real storm to blow our tent completely off the mountain?  I was happy to go back home, to have electric lights and windows that would shut against the rain and cold, a bathroom just a few feet away instead of a quarter mile, a shower I didn’t have to share with strangers, and a washer and dryer I didn’t have to feed quarters into.  I enjoy my camping vacations, but I wouldn’t if I had to live that way forever.  In fact, would you even enjoy living in a hotel forever?

              The scriptures call our lives here a sojourn, a short stay away from our real home.  Why do we act like this is all that really matters, like we want to stay here forever, and why are we so surprised when it rains on us occasionally?  This isn’t Heaven after all, and faith doesn’t expect Heaven now.

              “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also,” Jesus said.  Too many of us have our treasures heaped up on a mountaintop campsite or a beachfront condo, and lose our faith when the clouds roll in to spoil our vacation.  If you think this life and this world are all God had in mind for you, you have set your sights far too low.
 
These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city. Hebrews 11:13-16.
 
Dene Ward