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Most families have just returned from a road trip of some variety this past summer.  You may not realize it, but this is a fairly recent development.  We seem to think that the Declaration of Independence lists our inalienable rights as “life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and a thousand dollar (or more) family vacation every year.”  When I was growing up we might have gone on two or three “vacations.”  The rest of the time we visited family, and that involved nothing but visiting—the adults talking and the children playing together.  Anywhere we might have gone while there was a free day trip—no admission fees—and lunch was usually a picnic we packed ourselves.  

If it hadn’t been for discovering tent camping, my boys would not have had vacations either.  In those days you could pitch a tent in a state park for $7.00 a night, and cook your own meals over the campfire instead of eating out.  We also did our share of family visiting.  Although you hate to view your family as a “free motel,” it was the only way we could see them at least once a year.

I like to think of this life as a road trip.  Too many people consider it the destination and that will skew your perspective in a bad way.  If you think this life is supposed to be the good part, you will sooner or later be severely disappointed.

As we go along the road a lot of things happen.  We will be faced with decisions that are not easy to make, and which may turn out badly.  Sometimes we are too easy on ourselves, making excuses and rationalizing.  But other times we are entirely too hard on ourselves.  If you look back on a decision you made years ago, and find yourself wishing you had done things differently, that doesn’t necessarily mean you were wrong then.  Sometimes it simply means you were without experience, a little naïve, a lot ignorant.

Let’s put it this way.  I live almost an hour north of Gainesville, Florida.  If I leave for Atlanta at 8 AM, it’s no shame if I am not even to Macon by 10 AM.  On the other hand, if I leave at 5 AM and haven’t even made Macon yet, something is wrong.  I’ve been dawdling over gas pumps, stopping for snacks too many times, or wandering through tourist traps that have nothing to do with the trip itself.  The question, then, is not where you are on the road, but when you left in the first place.  You can’t expect yourself to know what to do in every situation of life when you haven’t even experienced much life.  The decision you make today may be completely different than the one you made in the same situation twenty years ago, but twenty years ago if you did the best you could do with what you knew, you did well.

And what are we doing on our road trip?  Are we wasting too much time at tourist traps?  Life is full of distractions, things not necessarily wrong, but which may not help us on the trip at all, or may even do harm by skewing our perspective.  It really isn’t important where you live and what kind of car you drive in this life.  If you think it is, you’ve forgotten where you’re headed—the here and now has become your goal instead.  

If you want to keep your mind on the goal, ignore the billboards life puts out for you and spend time with your atlas.  Nothing helps me get through a long trip more than watching the towns go by and following them with my finger on the map.  Every time I check the mileage we are a little further on, and soon, sooner than you might think, the destination is in sight.  That’s why you started this trip in the first place—not for the World’s Largest Flea Market, or the Gigantic Book Sale, or even the Only Locally Owned Canning Facility and Orchard (with free samples).  

Watch the road, use the map, avoid the tourist traps.  Make the best decisions you can at every intersection.  This is the only road trip you get.  Don’t mess it up.

Let your eyes look directly forward, and your gaze be straight before you. Ponder the path of your feet; then all your ways will be sure. Do not swerve to the right or to the left; turn your foot away from evil. Proverbs 4:25-27

Dene Ward

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            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

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            Many years ago on one of our camping trips to the mountains, Keith and I visited a pottery barn, where a potter was busily working at the wheel.  We watched him try for several minutes to make a certain type of curve at the lip of the vessel he was making, but every time the lip collapsed.  Finally he shook his head and muttered something about the clay having a fault in it.  So he changed his plans and made another vessel.  It was still a useful pot I am sure, but it did not have that intricate lip that would have made it more beautiful and unique.

            Suddenly, I understood a whole lot better all those passages in the Bible about the potter and the clay, and how God can use us without forcing His will on us.  God wants us all to be beautiful creations which He can use to accomplish His purpose, but when through our own freewill we rebel, He simply changes His mind and makes us into something else, something not quite as pretty, not quite as special, but usable nonetheless.

            We may become so rebellious that we actually think we can keep God from using us, but that is not the case. Some doctrines talk about foreordination in a way that actually limits God.  It makes Him need to control everything in order to accomplish his ends.  You do realize that notion came from Augustinianism, and Augustine got it from paganism.  Remember the doctrine of fatalism from the Greek goddesses called Fates?  The scriptures teach instead about a God so powerful that He can use us in spite of the fact that we are able to choose our courses of action.  He does not have to control us to bring His plan to fruition.  That is truly awesome power. 

            So make no mistake about it—God will use us, but it is up to us how He will use us.  Personally I would rather be a beautiful vase with an intricate, unique design, or even a plain, practical, but necessary and honorable cooking pot, than some sort of “second option.”  How would you like to be a spittoon, or maybe a chamber pot?  You see, we are all clay in the potter’s hand.  It’s only what He makes of us that we have any real choice about.

Now in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and earth, and some unto honor and some unto dishonor.  If anyone therefore purge himself…he shall be a vessel of honor, sanctified, meet for the Master’s use, prepared unto every good work, 2 Tim 2:20,21.

Dene Ward

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            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

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            About ten 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

           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

            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