We were hiking a mountain trail, sometimes straight up, sometimes straight down.  A babbling brook ran to our left at the bottom of a fifty foot ravine, making miniature waterfalls over rocks and roots long before we reached the larger and taller falls, weeping into a pool and running on down the hill.  As we made our way over another rise and around a bend, the leaf-strewn trail suddenly dipped and we found ourselves in a cypress swamp.  What?
            Oh yes, I remembered, we were not in the mountains after all; we were in Florida.  Yet it would have been easy to have fooled a person who had slept through the trip over rivers with names like Suwannee and Ocklockonee, traveling deep into the piney woods of the Big Bend, down to the swamplands.  If they had wakened in the campground on the ridge overlooking the river valley below, and walked the first mile of the path, they would have thought they were on the Appalachian Trail somewhere.
            But the sight of those huge cypresses, the bottoms of their trunks billowing like the folds of a skirt in the water, their knees standing two and three feet high around them, would have given pause.  Suddenly they would realize the shrubbery beneath the trees in the woods wasn’t rhododendron and mountain aster, but palmetto and needle palms.  The ground wasn’t hardwood leaf mold over rock, but pine straw matting over red or yellow clay and sand.  This is Florida—perhaps different from most other places in the state, but Florida nevertheless. 
            Where are you spiritually?  Are you where you think you are?  Or did you sleep through the first half of your life, and when your spirituality awakened, look around and at first glance think, “Yes, this is the right place,” when it was only a close facsimile?  Did you find yourself among people who seemed to be doing the right thing and so fail to take a really close look at your surroundings? 
            Why are you where you are?  Is it just because this is where Mom and Dad put you, or because you checked the map and stayed awake for the trip, knowing why you made which turns, and not only how to tell others to get here, but why they should be here with you?
            If you are in the mountains of Appalachia, you will need to look out for a few rattlesnakes and copperheads, but those are shy reptiles that will usually run if given the opportunity.  In a Florida swamp you will also need to watch out for cottonmouths and alligators.  Cottonmouths are notoriously aggressive—they will charge from cover, and then chase you.  And alligators move faster than anything that ungainly has a right to.  If you are wary of the wrong dangers, you are much more likely to be taken unawares. 
            God expects you to know where you are spiritually and why you are there.  He doesn’t want people who are where they are simply out of convenience and family tradition.  Where is the service in that? 
            He expects you to look out for the dangers that might surround you.  How can you be alert if the dangers you expect are not the ones in that area?
            And how will you ever find God if you are not where you thought you were?
 
From there you will seek the Lord your God and you will find Him if you search after Him with all your heart and with all your soul, Deut 4:29.
 
Dene Ward

Today's post is by guest writer Keith Ward.

For those who have never tented, campgrounds have bathhouses. The people with RV’s or tow-campers also have a bathroom in those. But they often use the Bathhouse to avoid having to empty their sewage tanks.
 
Bathhouses are usually at reasonable intervals, each one serving a set number of sites. We have never preferred sites near the bathhouse since everyone in your loop walks past you several times a day—no privacy. But, this last one set a record. We camped in Black Rock Mountain, a state park on the Eastern Continental Divide. We had stayed there the past year and as our custom is, walked through and picked the best sites. Even the hosts said that our #21 was about the best, though they slightly preferred #16.
 
#21 is the highest site, a constant uphill walk, a steep incline.  Though we were a bit cramped with our huge tents (for comfort), we had a marvelous view every day of the mountains to the East and every night 3000ft straight down to sparkling city lights. It was situated so that a shoulder of the hillside protected us from the winds. But there was that hill to the bathhouse. You think, “No problem going down.” Hah! That shows your lack of experience. Walking down a steep hill stresses the muscles in a different way, but still leaves one sore. The climb up was difficult. The hill was about a 30 degree incline except in the steep spots (In some spots, even the rotund could have touched the ground by reaching downward only a few inches—it was right out in front of you.) I counted 140 left steps when going up. On level ground, you can tape measure my military correct paces at 30”. Correcting that due to the grade still leaves the uphill climb at 150 yards or more, several times a day.
 
I would carry Dene’s necessary bag down for her and wait to carry it back when we brushed our teeth morning and evening. I carried it down earlier in the evening for her shower and got the fire going and the coffee on and returned to carry it back (40 lbs penalty weight kept my pace down with hers).  Even so, sometimes we’d stop and catch a breath on the way back up (Of course, I was just being gentlemanly and courteous to wait for her).
 
Adds new meaning to, “I’m pressing on the upward way….”
 
Would we do it over, certainly. The good stuff is at the top. Views do not come cheap.
 
Breakfasts alternated between 1) bacon, eggs, biscuits. 2) sausage & pancakes 3) sausage gravy and leftover biscuits, and repeat. One day, fried apples by the fire for dessert—yes, dessert for breakfast.
 
I grilled over open coals from oak kindling for our evening meals—chicken, pork chops, steak with baked potatoes done in the coals, burgers, chopped sirloin, except for one night when we had spaghetti and another with sausage and peppers we packed from our garden.
 
Thanks to the hill, we gained little, very little, weight.
 
People want to reach goals without paying the price. Trying to be spiritually healthy without climbing the hill means you will just become a fat pew potato. Dene and I are often told, "I wish I had your Bible knowledge." We did not levitate to that site and the knowledge came step by painful step. Often, we paused for breath and wondered whether we would make it. People with strong faith usually climbed over some tough times, those who express tenderness and lovingkindness often got there by overcoming the same natural reactions that plague us all.
 
The quiet times, the good food and the view allowed us to "catch a gleam of glory bright." Who will pay the price to enter the narrow door without the glimpses of the hope that God has laid up for us in every beauty of life?
 
 "And someone said to Him, “Lord, are there just a few who are saved?” And He said to them, “STRIVE to enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will SEEK to enter and will NOT be able. “Once the head of the house gets up and shuts the door, and you begin to stand outside and knock on the door, saying, ‘Lord, open up to us!’ then He will answer and say to you, ‘I do not know where you are from.’ “Then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank the Lord's Supper, and You were taught in our church’; " (Luke 13:23-26, modified, kw).
 
"Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, " (Rom 5:3).
 
Keith Ward

A couple of times when I was young my family, together with my aunt, uncle, and cousins, shared the rent on a house in New Smyrna Beach for a week.  It was an ordinary cement block house, probably built in the 1940s, two bedrooms, one bath, a living room and kitchen.  What made it worth renting was its location—right on the beach, which was not nearly so crowded in those days.  Every morning we four girls were out building sand castles and playing tag with the waves, floating on the undulating water just past the sandbar or diving below to play shark attack on one another.  We all smelled of suntan lotion and seaweed, coconuts and salt, and only came in for lunch and an afternoon of card games and board games during the worst of the heat, and were back out again in the evening when the sea breeze cooled enough to give us a shiver after once again dunking ourselves in the brine.
            Our parents got the two bedrooms, but we girls didn’t mind sharing the floor in the small living room, the gray, white-streaked linoleum tiles covered with quilts, the floor beneath crunching with a little grit despite all the sweeping our mothers did every day.  You live on the beach, you WILL have sand.  At 8 I was the oldest and usually the last one asleep.  No air conditioning in those days meant the windows stayed open wide and I loved listening to the roar of the ocean.  Over and over and over, the steady pounding of the surf gave me a feeling of security.  I did not have to guess if the next wave would roll in; all I had to do was wait for it, and eventually it lulled me to sleep.
            Fast forward to a time thirty years later.  We were camping on Anastasia Island, a beach 60 miles further north.  The state campground was still small back then, only one section just a few feet off the dirt trail to the beach, acres of palmetto groves separating it from the bridge to the city streets of old St Augustine.  The boys had their own tent, and as we lay in ours once again I listened to the surf crashing onshore, just as it had all those years before.  Over and over, as steady as a ticking clock, as a piano teacher’s metronome, as a heartbeat on a hospital monitor.  All those years and it had not stopped.
            And then another twenty years passed and we two spent a weekend on Jekyll Island.  This time we were too far from the beach to hear it in the night, but after a wonderful meal at the Driftwood Bistro we stopped on the beach for a walk and there it was.  The wind whipped around our legs and plastered my hair across my face, gulls screamed over us in the waning light, and the waves were still coming in, again and again and again, just as they have since the dawn of time.  They never stop.  Some days they may be rougher than others.  Some days the sea may look almost calm.  But check the water’s edge and that lacy froth still creeps onshore in its never-ending cycle.
            Thus says the LORD, who gives the sun for light by day and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar— the LORD of hosts is his name: ​“If this fixed order departs from before me, declares the LORD, then shall the offspring of Israel cease from being a nation before me forever.” Jer 31:35-36
            Jeremiah tells the people that God will restore his nation and establish a new covenant in the verses just preceding those, a covenant in which their sins will be “remembered no more.”  He uses the stability of the natural phenomena that God created as a guarantee of His promise.  Only if the sun stops rising, if the moon stops shining, if the waves stop rolling in, can you discount my promises, He says.  That guarantee counts for all of God’s promises.  He never changes, we are told.  He is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow, so yes, He will keep the promises He has made to us of redemption, of protection, of spiritual blessings and a final reward.
            Are you a little blue today?  Has your life been upended in a way you never expected, in a way you can hardly bear?  The sea God made is still roaring.  Those waves are still rolling in just as they have for generation after generation after generation.  The white caps you see are the same your parents saw and your grandparents and your great-grandparents on back to your earliest ancestors.  And God is still faithful to His people.  Close your eyes, listen to that perpetual roar, and breathe a little easier tonight.
 
I am the LORD your God, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar— the LORD of hosts is his name. ​And I have put my words in your mouth and covered you in the shadow of my hand, establishing the heavens and laying the foundations of the earth, and saying to Zion, ‘You are my people.’” Isa 51:15-16
 
Dene Ward
 

About twenty years ago, we were camping in a Georgia State Park, one of our favorites actually, private sites, modern bathhouses, beautiful scenery, and great hiking trails.  Ah yes, the hiking trails…
            We decided one day to do the big trail—up a mountain and back down, seven miles total.  So we cooked a hearty breakfast of pancakes, sausage, and coffee, and took off after cleaning up and securing everything against the elements and the wild animals, about ten in the morning.  We carried water and some snacks, and the park map.  I am the navigator in the family, and usually the only one with a decent sense of direction.  We expected to be back in time for an early supper, about four in the afternoon.  With time to build a cook fire, we would be eating by five, and ready for it. 
            We made the top of the mountain about one, took a few minutes to enjoy the view, eat an apple and a handful of peanuts, then started down the other side.  The grade was steep, and we were soon following a trail of switchbacks, but sure we were still on the right path because of the red blazes the park had so thoughtfully sprayed on the trees every so often, and because every turn matched the map.  Keith, the one who is always looking for an easier way, looked down the hill to our left and saw yet another switchback.  “So let’s just take the shortcut down,” he said. 
            Having grown up on the side of a mountain in the Ozarks, he is much surer footed than this flatlander, but he assured me that I could hold on to his shoulders and he would lead the way down safely, and possibly save us a couple hundred yards.  So I agreed and willingly followed.  We must have cut down through half a dozen switchbacks before the path finally leveled out. 
            We walked on, and came to a fork in the road that was not on the map.  Hmmm.  This time he trusted me and my sense of direction, and off we went toward what I knew was south, and thus had to be the right way.  A little further on there was another unmapped fork so we took the same direction.  And then another, and another.  Somehow this did not seem right, and about then I realized that I had not seen a red blaze in a long time.  About four-thirty we came to the end of the road—literally.  Beyond it lay a fifty foot drop to a creek running full and loud. 
            Obviously, we had missed something somewhere, but I knew we had not gone the wrong overall direction—we had just wound up on the wrong path.  We tried retracing our trail, but going at it backwards through the many forks we had taken, confused even me.  We were about resigned to spending the night in the woods.  I was exhausted, it was late, and getting colder by the minute.  The sweater I had taken off and tied around my waist due to the heat of exercise would not do me much good when the nighttime temperatures hit the 40s.  I was determined not to panic, though.  I figured the last thing Keith needed was a hysterical woman on his hands.  Tomorrow we would get out--somehow. 
            Finally, he told me to sit and wait while he checked another fork in the road.  I didn’t tell him that it scared me to death—with his lousy sense of direction it might easily be the last time I ever saw him.  But not ten minutes later he came running back.  “I found power lines,” he said.  “They have to lead somewhere.” 
            So we followed them, and about thirty minutes later came out on a gravel road.  We followed the lines further and came to a house.  Keith knocked on the door and explained our situation.  The man was on his way to work the night shift at a local factory and would take us back to camp, “about fifteen miles from here,” he added.  “You’re the second couple in the last month to come out of those woods lost.”
            We got back to camp at nearly seven, exhausted and relieved, and ready to eat, shower, and hit the sleeping bags.  The next morning we drove to the top of the mountain, then checked out the trail going down, careful to stay on it, watch for blazes, and look at the map.  We were sure the park was at fault.  But no, at the end of the third or fourth switchback the trail and blazes led straight ahead and down the other side of the mountain.  When we had left the trail and cut through those switchbacks to what looked like the same trail, we had missed that and had wound up on a mountain bike trail, as yet unfinished, unmapped, and “un-blazed” by the color-coded spray paint.  The map was correct; we just did not follow it.  At that point we were not ready for another seven mile hike, but the next year we went back to that park and followed the trail carefully the whole way.  We got back about four-thirty and never once got lost because we stayed on the trail and followed the map!
            This one is easy, isn’t it?  God has given us a map.  It does not matter what things may look like--stay on the trail; follow the map!  You may see a trail to the side that seems like the same one.  Don’t take a shortcut that leads you from what you know is right.  If it is the same trail, you will get there eventually.  If it is not, you may never find your way back.  Always look for the blazes that the faithful who went ahead of you painted for you to follow.  You may think you have a great sense of direction—but if you get off track, that won’t keep you from getting lost.  Or being lost, which is what we are all trying to avoid. 
            Not only has God given you a map, He is out there Himself looking for you.  Don’t be proud; take advantage of the offer and follow His lead.  You will always make it home, no matter how far off the trail you have gotten.  The Trailblazer knows the way.
 
I will seek that which was lost, and will bring back that which was driven away, and will bind that which was broken, and will strengthen that which was sick… For the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost, Ezek. 34:16; Luke 19:10.
 
Dene Ward
 

This one was written ten or twelve years ago.  I have since found it in several church bulletins, both paper ones and those online.  I think maybe it is the epitome of a "Golden Oldie."

About 20 years ago, we spent a long weekend camping in one of our north Florida parks.  It was cold that November, the coldest weather we had ever camped in, and I was busily trying to remember to pack enough cold weather clothes to keep us warm, especially for a night outdoors.  Unfortunately, I forgot the garment bag that held our Sunday clothes. 
            Not attending services that Sunday morning in the nearby town was not an option for us.  We raised our boys the way I was raised—on Sundays we went to the assembly of the saints, period.  No one ever even thought to say, “Will we attend today?”
            So we walked into the services that morning in jeans and flannel shirts.  We did not even have on our “best” jeans, because we learned early that camping could be a dirty, staining experience.  It was not quite so bad for the guys—one or two other men did not have on ties--but there I was, the only woman in the place without a dress and heels.  And without exception, the women looked at me, turned their heads, and walked away.  None of them ever did speak to me, even after Keith spoke knowledgeably in Bible class, and we obviously knew the hymns.  I tried not to be judgmental, but I kept wondering if they thought we were some poor, down and out family, who had stopped, “just to try to get some money.”  You know why?  Because I had thought the same thing in the past about others who looked like us. 
            I wanted to stand up and say, “My husband preached full time for ten years.  I teach Bible classes and have some Bible class literature in the bookstores.  My children can probably answer more Bible questions than you can!”  I wanted to rub their noses in the fact of their discrimination.  But I didn’t.  Instead, I pondered my own guilt, and wondered if I would have done any better.
            So take a minute and think about your own behavior on Sunday mornings.  Whom do you rush to greet?  Whom do you leave standing, feeling awkward and unwelcome?  Which ones may need the Lord the most?  In fact, which ones might the Lord himself have welcomed the most fervently?  Would we have stood with the Pharisees, rebuking him for eating with sinners?  And weren’t we, in our suits and ties, dresses and heels, once in the same condition?  And couldn’t we find ourselves there again, if we do not follow his example?
 
My brethren, hold not the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with respect of persons.  For if there comes into your assembly a man with a gold ring, in fine clothing, and there comes in also a poor man in vile clothing, and you have regard to him who wears the fine clothing, and say, “Sit here in a good place,” and you say to the poor man, “Stand there,” or “Sit under my footstool,” do you not make distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?  Listen, my beloved brethren, did not God choose those who are poor as to the world to be rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which he promised to them who loved him?  Howbeit, if you fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,” you do well, but if you have respect of persons, you commit sin, being convicted by the law as transgressors.  For judgment is without mercy to him who shows no mercy, James 2:1-5,8-9,13.
 
Dene Ward
           

We have had some cold this winter, more than in recent years.  Over the holidays we had at least two nights in the low to mid 20s, and have had quite a few in the 30s and 40s.  If you are north of the Florida-Georgia line that may not seem too bad to you, but for us, it's noteworthy.  It means when we go out in the mornings for our third cup of coffee and to throw treats for Chloe, we head for the east fire pit rather than sit on the breezy carport.  Even with layers of shirts, sweaters and coats, and even in sunny Florida, those plastic chairs feel cold to the backside, so we pile on the firewood, usually deadwood gathered from around the property.  If the fire is more smoke than flame, a good piece of fat lighter will usually get it going hot and strong, and a handful of pine straw provides the strong, hot, and immediate blaze our bodies crave for comfort. 
            After a few minutes we are finally warming up, both outside and in.  The hardwoods will begin to coal up and suddenly, though the flames may be lower, the heat is much higher.  I often need to turn a bit to the sides to keep my pants and the legs within them from scorching.  Sometimes we even need to push our chairs back a foot or two, and Chloe suddenly prefers to sit to the side on her pile of carefully raked up pine straw rather than right next to us.  When it gets that hot, all you have to do is look up and even on a perfectly still morning, see the leaves on the branches 30 feet above our heads dancing in the heat waves.  Hot air rises, they taught us in science class, and there is the proof of it.
            The Bible uses "heat" as a metaphor for anger, particularly when referring to God's anger.  He let loose on them his burning anger, wrath, indignation, and distress…(Ps 78:49).  But the same figure is used of our anger as well.  ​A hot-tempered man stirs up strife…(Prov 15:18).  Before we go too far along with this, we would do well to remember that anger is not necessarily a sin.  Be angry and sin not, Paul says in Eph 4:26.  But too often, that becomes the excuse du jour, a little too handy and too often used.  Still, we are right to be angry about some things.  ​Hot indignation seizes me because of the wicked, who forsake your law (Ps 119:53), but I fear that too often, our anger has nothing to do with our defense of God, righteousness and justice, but simply of ourselves and what was done to us.
            If a man has a constant problem with anger, the real issue isn't what caused the anger, but the fact that he is simply an angry man.  Anything can raise his hackles at the least provocation, and just like the heat from our morning fire, it will rise to the top, causing turmoil and upset.  It is not just his problem; it affects everyone around him.  As charcoal to hot embers and wood to fire, so is a quarrelsome man for kindling strife (Prov 26:21).  And perhaps worse, Make no friendship with a man given to anger, nor go with a wrathful man, lest you learn his ways and entangle yourself in a snare (Prov 22:24-25).  An angry man is not a happy man and he had rather no one else be happy either.  It should go without saying that he is no fun to be around.
            Many angry men have the mistaken idea that their anger is a sign of strength.  God says otherwise.  A man with a quick temper is a fool (Prov 14:17; Eccl 7:9)).  He has no understanding (Prov 14:29).  He is weak (16:32), and he has no sense (19:11).  That's what God thinks of him. 
            So when you notice the hot air rising, especially within yourself, take a step backwards and reflect.  Why are you so easily angered?  (It can happen to women as well as men, you know.)  What has gotten so deep inside your heart that you can no longer control it?  No bad day or difficult circumstance can ever excuse it.  For some who are deeply damaged, it might require some professional help, but for the average person, it is a choice he makes when he decides to let anger take the controls.  Other people experience the same difficulties and manage to handle them in a righteous manner, including the Lord when he was on this earth.  With him on your side, so can you.
 
Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God (Jas 1:19-20).
 
Dene Ward

One of our favorite parts of camping has always been the food!  Every night we cook over a wood fire—burgers, chops, steaks--everything tastes like it came from a five star gourmet restaurant when you have oak and hickory burning under them.

Keith starts the fire about a half hour before we need it, stacking one inch square split pieces of wood in an open crisscross pattern.  The flame is often three feet high and roaring.  Do you think that is when we cook?  No, not unless you want scorched raw meat.  The fire must burn down to the point that the flames are gone and all that is left are red coals.  Now it’s time to cook.  That inch or two of quiet embers is far hotter than a three foot high roar.
He opens the folding grill over them to burn it clean, and places the meat of the night six to ten inches above the heat, sometimes over to the side if, as is the case with chicken, we need to make sure it gets done all the way through before the outside chars. 

Children look at the two fires and it seems totally counterintuitive to them.  Surely the bright high flames make the hotter fire and the softly glowing embers the coolest.  Then they hold their hands out and discover their mistake.

Babes in the Lord can make the same mistake about the faith of others.  Surely the loud showy faith is the real one.  Surely the person who shouts amen and holds up his hands is more passionate about his love of God than the member who sits and quietly listens or bows his head.  I have lost count of the number of young people I have heard say they admired someone’s faith when it was the former type and not the latter.  The loud faith may well be just as sincere as the quiet, but if that’s all you look for, you will miss some of the best advice, the best encouragement, and the best examples of resilient faith in a life of trial that ever sat in front of you—or behind you, or even right next to you on the pew.

You are smart to look for help and encouragement in another’s faith.  Just be smart about the signs you judge it by.  Loud might just as easily be hot air as roaring fire.
 
Take away from me the noise of your songs; for I will not hear the melody of your viols. But let justice roll down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream. Amos 5:23-24
 
Dene Ward

I’m sitting in my camo-mesh lounge chair in front of a campfire, the flame whirling up in a mini-tornado, the smoke wafting down the hillside away from the tent site.  The sun peeks through the leaf canopy dappling the brown, red, orange, and yellow foliage-strewn ground just enough to moderate the cool air into [long] shirtsleeve weather.  Pieces of crystal blue sky show here and there, grayed occasionally by a patch of camp smoke.  The titmice nag at us from the saplings and bushes at the foot of tall pines, hickory, beeches, and red oak, while a woodpecker alternates his door-knock pecking and his manic laugh.
            The campsite could not have been laid out any better.  A long back-in approach left us plenty of room to unpack boxes, coolers, and suitcases, and still have room to stack firewood and set up tents on a perfect length tent site, something not always easy to find for a 16 x 10 tent.  The table fit nicely inside the screen and the fire ring is far enough from both the tents to avoid sparks.
            The park itself is beautiful, lakes, valleys, mountain tops to hike—no hike longer than three to four hours, some appreciably shorter.  The bathhouses are clean with plenty of hot water and strong sprays from large showerheads.  The campsites afford as much or as little privacy as one wants—take your pick.  It is quiet and peaceful, yet only ten minutes from grocery, gas, and pharmacy.
            We’ve been here six days now—perfect park, perfect campsite, perfect weather.  We haven’t even had our customary day of rain, nor even an overcast morning.  So this is not the trip to test our mettle as campers.  It’s all been way too perfect.  But you know what?  We won’t have many stories to tell from this trip.  Oh wait!  Our forty year old electric blanket did give out on us the first—the coldest—night.  And don’t you see?  That’s the story we’ll be telling—and that’s when we found out we were seasoned campers.  We shrugged our shoulders and snuggled a little closer together in the double sleeping bag.
            Peter tells us that God will test our mettle as His servants.  Wherein you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been put to grief in manifold trials, that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold that perishes though it is proved by fire, may be found unto praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ, 1 Pet 1:6-7.
            Too often, instead of passing the test, we use it as an excuse.  We say, “I know I didn’t do well, but after all, I was dealing with such difficult circumstances.”  Instead of growing and getting better and stronger, we blow up as usual and then apologize yet again.  If we were really improving, the apologies would become less frequent, and one day, perhaps, unnecessary.  That’s what God expects of us.
            He doesn’t look down and say, “Well, I know they can handle this trial.”  Why should He bother sending it?  Instead, the test comes and after we pass He looks down, as He did on Mt Moriah and says, “Now I know.”
            And it’s those tests that give us the experience to help others and the strength to endure more.  God never promised us perfect lives here on this sin-cursed world.  He did not promise you fame and fortune (no matter what Joel Osteen says).  He did not promise perfect health, perfect families, or even perfect brethren.  What He did promise is a perfect reward after we successfully navigate what amounts to, in the perspective of Eternity, a moment or two of imperfection.
            But only if you have the mettle.
 
When they had preached the gospel to that city and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch, strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God, Acts 14:21-22.
 
Dene Ward

It happens all the time in exactly the same way.  Sometimes we are coming out to our own rock-lined fire ring up against the eastern woods.  Other times we are rebuilding in the metal ring of a state park campsite.  Feathery white ashes cover the circle as much as four or five inches deep, the remains of a dead fire from the morning or even the night before.  But lean over and blow on those ashes and red embers glow beneath.  Hold your hands a few inches above and feel the warmth from that earlier fire.
            So we start gathering twigs of all sizes.  First we lay on a handful of pine straw, which almost immediately begins to smoke, followed by twigs the circumference of darning needles, then pencils, then finally some as big around as your thumb.  Usually before we are finished the straw is burning and once we hear the first crackle of wood, we know we have been successful.  If we have it, a sliver of lighter wood will ensure the fire doesn't go out, especially if we must take the time to grab a hatchet or axe and do some log splitting.  Now we're ready to sit back and warm our bones, throwing on another full size log as needed.
            You can learn a lot from a campfire.  For one thing, those tiny darning-needle-sized twigs are just as important as a larger log.  The latter may last much longer and give out more heat, but it would never have caught in the first place without the smaller twigs.  It might smoke and char a bit on the outside, but that's about it.
            For another, you aren't the only thing a good fire warms up.  Sometimes in our zeal for warmth, we stack twigs so high that a few fall off and roll to the back of the ring.  I was watching one on an early cool spring morning, seven or eight inches long, maybe a half inch in diameter, as it stood against the back side of the ring, at least a foot from the flames.  Suddenly, without a spark landing on it and without even smoking first, it burst into flame.  It had been a roaring fire.  We had already backed our chairs away a good two or three feet further, and it was so hot that a twig a good foot or so away had burst into flame without even being in the fire.
            So which piece of wood are you?
            Are you the small, seemingly insignificant twig that catches quickly and then passes its heat on to another and another and yet another?  The one who constantly mentions the Lord in your life and the love and generosity of spirit in your brethren rather than complaining about them?
            Are you the one who burns so hot that anyone nearby catches on fire, too?  The one who brings your friends, who peppers the preacher with questions they have asked you as you try to satisfy their curiosity and teach them the truth?
            Are you the larger log that burns long and hot, leaving embers behind that will help others start yet another fire after you are gone, one that might even burn larger and hotter than anything you ever imagined?  The parents who faithfully teach children who grow up to preach the Word to hundreds, who work long and hard to start a congregation in your area, who hold Bible studies in your home and attend gospel meetings as your Friday night entertainment?
            Campfires:  I have always enjoyed sitting next to one, watching the flames, yellow, orange, red, purple, and even blue, listening to the crackle and hiss, smelling the various smells of burning oak, hickory, and cedar.
            They are also a pretty good place to sit and think…
 
If I say, “I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name,” there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot.  (Jer 20:9).
 
Dene Ward        

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