Tuesday Sep 03, 2019
Camping Under the Clouds | Numbers 9:15-23
As a young boy, I remember my dad taking me camping in the Nantahala Forest in the Southern Appalachian Mountains. Now if you’re a rugged Colorado adventurer, you might turn your nose up at our itinerary for the weekend, but to me this was adventure. A weekend with my dad in the woods. I’d get to ask him life’s questions, we’d share some holy moments, and he’d share his heart, and maybe I’d share mine. We would make a couple meals over a fire, camp under the night sky, and then in the morning, brave the class 2 rapids of the Nantahala River, in our own personal rafts called "duckies." As it turns out however, we were not the only ones spending the night in the Nantahala Forest that weekend. Word had made its way around the camp that it was very likely that an out-of-town guest had also decided to make camp in those woods that night. Eric Rudolph, top ten on the FBI’s Most Wanted, the Olympic Park Bomber, who, as time would tell, would last for the next five years hiding out in the Kudzu-laden forests of the Nantahala, had made camp somewhere near ours. Now I was twelve years old. This was no measurable threat. I owned a Swiss army knife and knew how to whittle. I was not fine. I was afraid. I didn’t deserve this! I wondered why God and my dad had brought me to the woods to meet my demise. I slept with both eyes open and I needed the sun to come up a little sooner than was planned for the next day. I wanted to get the heck out of that camp, get in that raft, paddle as fast as I could, and get to where we were going. And looking back, I think I missed out on some holy moments with my dad.
I wonder what life would’ve been like as a young Levite boy, traveling with the Israelites in the desert on the way to the Promised Land. They were camping out. If you have a Bible today you can turn with me to the book of Numbers 9:15. And as we jump into this journey with the Israelites today I was reminded of a quote from one of my favorite pastors, Mark Dever, of Capitol Hill Baptist in Washington, DC. --- "The Old Testament is the New Testament concealed." In another book he wrote: "The New Testament is the Old Testament revealed." Whether that saying is original to him or not, I don't know, but I know that he's echoing the words of Paul in Romans 15:4 -- For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope...
Comments (0)
To leave or reply to comments, please download free Podbean or
No Comments
To leave or reply to comments,
please download free Podbean App.