Campfire

One of the things I like best about camping is the nightly campfire. Now since this is October I will say that a morning campfire is quite nice, also! Much time was spent collecting wood and getting and keeping the fire going in the morning, so I lost some of that time I usually have for reading, but I don’t mind a bit. The crackling fire, the occasional hooting owl, and coyote cries help to season the conversational tone among my family members. For me and my family, it has always been the closest bonding moments and makes for some of our finest memories. It’s amazing what you can share and relate together without the cell phones, television, politics, email, computers games, and (fill in your favorite here), etc. This time it was just my youngest son and I, but it changed little. “Look at all those stars”…”Look at that orange moon rising over the lake”…”Look at those birds taking off together, it looks like bubbles the way the sun reflects off of them”…”Can you hear that? The sound of a flock of birds “whooshing” silently overhead”

That orange moon rising over the lake was something (why did I forget the camera!). What was this very large orange ball rising over the horizon? Look how it sends a straight column of orange reflecting off the stillness in the surface of the lake. The column making a path directly to me! It was spectacular! I no longer wonder about the origins of the “gods” from the ancient civilizations. The God of creation was trying to touch their souls through His creation. As humanity always seems to do, the ancient civilizations just got it wrong.

Paul tried to set the record straight in Athens:
“For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, 'To an unknown god.' What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things.” (Acts 17:23-26)

I shared these thoughts with my son by that campfire (telling Paul’s Athens experience in my own words). He said, in a matter-of-factly way…“Really? Hmm”.