Here. There. Everywhere.

I only got really lost in the woods once. Well, I wasn’t really lost. I just couldn’t find my way home.

About halfway through a mile-long walk from a deer stand in the deep, old woods inside the Mississippi River levee, my flashlight went dead. It was dark. Country dark. Country in-the-woods dark. This was pre-cell phone days. After about 30 minutes, I’ll admit I was a little scared and my imagination was working pretty well. It’s amazing how magnified small noises are in the deep, old woods when it’s country dark.

I prayed, “Lord don’t let something eat me”… like a panther or bear or even worse, a giant river mosquito. Finally I heard one of my hunting friends coming on his four-wheeler, but had no way to signal him without firing off a round from my 270 up in the air. I really wanted to save those bullets for the panthers or bears or giant mosquitoes. Fortunately, he turned off the engine within hearing distance and found his way to me.

Momentarily, I forgot. But even there in the dark, I wasn’t alone. God was there. In the darkness. In the light. In the good. In the bad. Sometimes he just has to remind me.

“Never will I leave you;

never will I forsake you.”

—-   (Hebrews 13:5)