It was a place I could have stayed forever. How many times I have found such campsites! Place so beautiful it gave a man the wistfuls to see or to think back on. So many times we said, ‘We’ve got to come back some time!’ an’ knowin’ all the while we never would.”
–Louis L’Amour (Lonely On the Mountain)
“So I commended enjoyment, because a man has nothing better under the sun than to eat, drink, and be merry; for this will remain with him in his labor all the days of his life which God gives him under the sun.”
–Ecclesiastes 8:15 (NKJV)
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It ain’t never the same. I’ve used the above quotation before, and relate to it. How many times have I sat by a campfire thinking, “Ah, ain’t this the life.” I’ve viewed vistas and the far horizons. But will I make it back to them? No. Even if I did they would have changed. It used to be so much fun to just go off into the mountains along a stream and camp. Very few places where a person can do that anymore. People have come.
But it also makes me think of what I wrote yesterday. Selah! When I think of some of the things I’ve seen and experienced I wonder if I shouldn’t have stopped and had a brief interlude and wondered at it. The times I have seen a thunderbolt travel across the sky and heard the thunder crashing. Selah–the awesome power of God is more powerful and magnificent than that. When I’ve seen a trout leap out of water for a fly on a high mountain lake. Selah–the wonders of God’s creation.
I think of the times I’ve called for Annie to come look at this, or while driving I’ll exclaim for her to look at that. Selah. The times she has called me to do the same. Selah It is a break from our normal routine. Something has happened, something has stood out enough to call our attention to it. We get so caught up in careers, making money, paying bills that we don’t see; we don’t listen. We don’t bother. Instead we try to make up our own interludes with entertainment, concerts, sports; we don’t sit back and take a break.
If this is true in our daily lives, how much more true is it in our spiritual lives? How many times has God whispered “Selah” to us and we don’t hear Him, or we don’t heed Him? When He speaks, when He shows us something in the Word we often are too busy with “something.” Selah–stop and listen, stop and think, stop and wonder. The devil cracks a smile, for he wants us to stay away from thinking about the Lord. “Stay busy,” he cries, while often the Lord is wanting us to say “Wow” at something He has done for us.
I really enjoy sitting on my back deck in the morning doing my devotions. I promised myself many years ago not to miss any sunrises as so much is taking place at that time. I sit on the deck watching first the graylight, then the glow of morning light with its colors. The birds may be chirping, the squirrels running through the limps of the trees, deer walking quietly, and often the sound of the crow. Sometimes I stop–marvel, look, and listen–Selah. I never thought of it that way before.
Selah