"In tents" experience - Devotion for 8/1/07

“In tents” experience – Devotion for 8/1/07

Last night I was out at Camp Rockfish to preach for the campers, and I thought I’d share the message that I shared with them last night for today’s devotional.

Several years ago some friends of mine talked me in to going camping with them. I have always disliked camping, going way back to my Cub Scout days – it always seemed like I got stuck in the same smelly tent with the same smelly kid, or the same kid who snored like crazy and wouldn’t let me sleep. Those “in tents” experiences led to my strong dislike of camping, and I carried that dislike over into my adult years. However, these buddies were able to convince me that somehow we would have a good time going camping at Raven Rock State Park. So, to prepare for the camping trip we began to pack all the essential things we knew we would need. We packed the tents (two of them, because we knew I was already “two tents” – think about that one), we packed the sleeping bags, and I packed my fluffy little pillow – because frankly I needed my fluffy little pillow. We knew that we also needed to take a cooler and plenty food, because we knew the four of us would be able to consume quite a bit of food around the campfire. We all loved music, so we also knew that we needed to take our guitars and have a good old camp fire sing along. Since we loved music so much we also decided someone needed to bring a CD player so that when we got tired of playing guitar we could listen to CDs. We loaded up the cars, and off we went to Raven Rock State Park.

When we got there, we soon found out that we were going to have to hike in to the campsite, and that the hike was going to be about a mile. No problem, we thought, because we were all young, healthy dudes. So we began unloading the cars and getting the stuff out to carry. It didn’t take too long to realize that we were definitely going to have to make at least 2 trips because of all the stuff we had brought. We knew that we would be able to at least take the tents, sleeping bags, and my fluffy little pillow (because we all know how important that is), but we knew we’d have to come back for the guitars, food, and cooler. Off we went on that 1.5 mile hike carrying all that we could handle over the hills and through the woods. After what seemed like forever in 90 degree heat, we finally got to the camp site, and we decided before heading back for the other important stuff we had better go ahead and set up the tents. These tents we the “easy to put up” kind of tents – you know the ones that only take a few hours to set up. So we set up the tents, rolled out the sleeping bags, and I fluffed up my fluffy little pillow, and then we headed back onto the 2 mile hike back to the cars. Climbing up those hills as the temperature continued to rise we were exhausted by the time we finally got back to the cars. So two of us grabbed the cooler, the other two grabbed the food, and somehow we managed to also grab the guitars and CD player – after all, we really were looking forward to the camp fire sing along time. Climbing up those hills again (somehow it was uphill both ways) in increasing temperatures (somehow it was getting hotter as the sun went down), we hiked those 3 miles back to the campsite (somehow the hike grew longer each trip). Exhausted, we finally reached the campsite, and we knew that we had better hurry up and look for the firewood for our campfire. We quickly assembled all the wood we thought we would need, as well as all the kindling and stuff to get the fire started. One of the dudes had already started getting the meat out that we were going to cook over the fire, and we could all almost already taste the food we would cook. So I was a little surprised that when it came time to light the fire I couldn’t find the matches.

I didn’t bring the matches, and unfortunately neither did anyone else. Not only that, we also didn’t have a lighter. Nor did we have flint. In desperation to light the fire I began to rub two sticks together really quickly, but I was pretty exhausted from the 4 mile uphill hike that I had taken several times already and I wasn’t able to even generate any smoke. When we couldn’t find any other campers nearby we finally realized someone would have to walk all the way back to the cars to get the matches. Since we couldn’t agree on which one would go, we all went, and off we went making that 5 mile uphill hike in 110 degree temperature – at least we weren’t carrying anything this time. When we got to the cars, we soon realized that not only did we not take the matches to the campsite, we didn’t even pack them in the car. I thought about pressing in the cigarette lighter, and seeing if I could run back to the campsite while it was still hot, but I knew that I couldn’t cover 6 miles uphill before that thing would cool off. I finally had to call my wife to bring us the matches, so that we could finally enjoy our beloved camp fire. And I’ll have you know we didn’t play the much-needed guitars once because we were all so tired.

Somehow in the midst of preparing for this great trip, we had left out one of the most important things – the matches to get the fire started. Somehow in life many times we leave out the most important thing – God. We think we need to have all these essential things in life that will give us joy and happiness, but without God those things are nothing. Without God all those things are just like raw meat that you can’t eat. I believe that when we set off in the journey of life, we have got to “Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (Matthew 6:33). Today, make sure you’re not leaving God behind. Without Him, we’ll just find ourselves wasting energy needlessly wandering around for nothing.