I frequently have dreams where I dream I’m dreaming. Or maybe I wake up and realize I’m dreaming? I’m not sure....like this one I had last night......
I was on a road trip, going down the interstate, all by myself, pulling a big trailer with another small trailer attached to that one. I pulled off at an exit to get a snack—it looked a lot like the Quik Trip at Platte City. I got in the truck to get back on the highway, but instead of the entrance ramp, I turned into a small lane that quickly got a whole lot smaller, was hemmed in by bushes, and dead-ended abruptly. I was stuck in the woods with that rig, and the only way out was to back it up.
What a mess. I climbed out of the truck and surveyed the situation. I knew there was a way to back up a trailer--that my son Aaron knew how. It somehow involved turning your wheels the opposite way you wanted to go. But I was pulling TWO trailers. I was stumped.
I walked around for a while, trying to figure it out. And I realized I wasn’t going to get out of there without some help. So I walked out of the woods, and was thrilled to see a pack of twelve year old boys going by on bicycles. I flagged them down, asked them to come help me. They followed me into the woods. There were enough of them that I figured they could LIFT the trailers up so that I could just back the whole thing up.
It took some time to explain to the boys what we were going to do, to get everyone organized. I was in the middle of doing that when I was rudely interrupted by the realization that this was just a DREAM!—that I didn’t have to get that rig out of there after all. That made me MAD! because I’d gone to a lot of effort to sort this thing out, and I wasn’t about to go off and leave it without the satisfaction of a job well done. So I went back and started trying to hurriedly get the thing out of there, before I woke up and ruined the whole thing, but it was too late, and suddenly I found myself lying on my back in bed wondering what in the world that was all about.
I walked into the garage today and saw my car had a flat tire. And so in anguish I cried out with a loud voice, "O God, WHY? Why has this happened to me?" Just kidding. It was pretty apparent why this had happened to me. Closer examination revealed a nail stuck in the tire. I had picked it up somewhere. It’s not the first time. I’ll have to take it in and get it fixed. Life will go on.
Sometimes horrible things DO happen. Sometimes we do cry out, "Why LORD???" And generally, all we get from God is silence. I was pondering why we hold God responsible for the big horrible things, but just generally accept the little annoyances of life, understanding it’s just part of the way things are.
Tires aren’t evil—they keep us moving. Nails aren’t evil either—they hold stuff together. They just aren’t good together. Get a grip.
For those who don't know.....Peri Zahnd becomes Miss Lucy when she's in the mountains, and her main man is Mr. Jinks.
It’s become a familiar occurrence—the alarm clock going off once a year at 1 am during our family vacation—the wake-up call for the Longs Peak climb. The past two years I got up and dressed silently along with the others in the clothes that had been carefully laid out just a few hours before, gulped down a bowl of Cheerios, and hiked the six and a half miles with the summitters, only to wave good-bye at the Keyhole. I would have done the same today, but the guys weren’t going the Keyhole route, wanting to try the Loft, and would be turning off at Chasm Junction, so I made other plans for the day.
Since I wanted the car, I’d need to drive them to the trailhead. So instead of getting up when they did, I laid there and began to dread returning at 2:15 am to this remote house we had rented halfway up the side of Prospect Mountain. Our road dead-ended after several switchbacks at the house, and there was a climb up a set of steps past a bushy tree that hung over the stairs. As Jinks would put it, I had a case of "bear on the brain."
We’ve been talking about the world, the "cosmos", and what the Bible has to say about it. John 3:16—"For God so loved THE WORLD" and didn’t send his only son into the world to condemn it, but to SAVE it. However, the same man, John wrote in his epistle that we should "love not THE WORLD." And so I love the world, but I don’t love it.....another one of the ditches we humans are called to straddle.
But it’s true, I love the world, INTENSELY, but there are some things I really hate. I sat down to think about those things briefly, and I made some lists...
