Not What I Was Thinking

As I was walking along a trail I've hiked less than half a dozen times, my mind began to think about the past twelve hours. I had tried to talk myself out of this vision quest, felt extreme unease and nervousness, lost my hammock in the dark and stumbled around the woods looking for it, nearly blew off the whole outing, but then realized all of it was God trying to teach me something, and then enjoyed a pleasant night time hike around a lake before having an enjoyable front porch conversation that concluded with me spending a windy night in my warm bed. Now I was back in the woods early in the morning, having found my gear, and walking while trying to process what God was saying.

I started thinking about how easy it was to find my hammock when the sun came up. I had a light the previous night, but the luminosity of a flashlight, even my 230 lumen flashlight for backpacking, compares to the sunlight. It took me all of 3 minutes in the morning to locate the trees I had set up between the night before, and even if I had wandered around all night, I probably wouldn't have been able to locate that thing.

My mind took this and went to the book of Proverbs. Below is what I wrote on a 3x5 card at some point that morning.

Proverbs

"There is a way that seems right to a many but its end is the path of destruction."
-My flashlight (?)

"commit your works to the Lord and your plans will be established."
-the sun (?)


Those verses are from Proverbs 16, verse 25, "There is a way which seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." and verse 3, "Commit your works to the Lord and your plans will be established." I had used these same verses in a sermon I had written years ago, and while I remembered what they said, I couldn't remember the reference for the life of me.

My waterproof Bible contains the New Testament, and Psalms and Proverbs. I knew it was in Proverbs, and something made me think the first verse was verse 13 of some chapter. I began to go through the Proverbs, reading every verse 13 in the 31 chapters. I did this just to cover all my bases, I knew it wasn't in the first few or last few chapters of the book. Obviously I didn't find it because I was looking at the wrong verse number, and since I wasn't getting on my phone, I had to let it go. Fortunately, like the night before, God had something different in mind. It was not at all what I was thinking, though now in hindsight what I was thinking kind of fits, but it was something that would speak directly to my heart....


Fight the lion, 1 Peter 5.1-11

TO GOD ALONE BE THE GLORY!