He…accepted a fresh cup of coffee and leaned back in his chair. He was a man of simple tastes and many appreciations.”
–Louis L’Amour (“The Marshal of Sentinel”)
Well, it’s been shore busy since the last time yuh showed up. What’s that, yuh showed up last week, but the door was locked. Sorry, but the missus and I had to take the steel horse on a trip over to San Antonio. No, I wasn’t lookin’ for the Rose, I already have mine, but was visitin’ a friend who turned up kinda puny. Need to check on him, yuh know how some of those ol’ cantankerous people can be. Had nice time visitin’ with the ol’ gang. Kinda miss them.
Then both the missus and I had a week of gettin’ ready to see the doctor about checkin’ our insides out. Both of us did right well in the exam, but sure glad that’s over, but the Lord sure is good and is faithful. He’s been takin’ right good care of us.
Say, don’t know if it happened at yur place, but we finally received about twenty minutes of nice rain yesterday. Shore did need it as we haven’t had any in a month of Sundays. I had some coffee and we went out to sit on the front porch. It was refreshin’ to say the least. Sometimes we just need to take a few moments… What? Refill? Shore pard, just wasn’t payin’ any attention to yur cup, so busy with my own. Back to what I was sayin’, sometimes we need to take a few moments to enjoy the refreshing rain. Watch it come down and rejuvenate the land. Hmmm, yuh know, the same is true about the refreshin’ rain of the Holy Spirit when He falls down. We need to take a few moments and let Him rejuvenate our poor, ol’ depleted souls.
We just keep gettin’ busier and busier, and with what? Just plain ol’ busyness. Well, Pard, don’t get yourself in a tither this week with all the ramblin’s out there. Stay cool and calm, but stay ready. Sit tall in the saddle, but before mountin’ up, check that cinch.
Month: August 2019
Echoes From the Campfire
Money will buy a man anything but his own destiny.”
–Luke Short (The Branded Man)
“For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.”
–1 Timothy 6:10 (NKJV)
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Money, the love and seeking of it, has probably destroyed more people than anything else. That’s perhaps one of the reasons that this ol’ fence post has done his best to keep from being a millionaire. However, in this world, money is needed, if for no other reason than just to pay the bills that are necessary and those added because of wants and desires. God has given some the ability to make money, and He expects them to be good stewards of it. To others He has given other talents and abilities. The following is a story of a man who was given a precious gift by the Lord–read it carefully then thoughtfully.
“Is there a hell?
“Once upon a time a person was touched by God, and God gave him a priceless gift. This gift was the capacity for love. He was grateful and humble, and he knew what an extraordinary thing had happened to him. He carried it like a jewel and he walked tall and with purpose.
“From time to time he would show this gift to others, and they would smile and stroke his jewel. But it seemed that they’d also dirty it up a little. Now, this was no way to treat such a precious thing, so the person built a box to protect his jewel. And he decided to show it only to those who would treat it with respect and meet it with reverent love of their own.
“Even that didn’t work, for some tried to break into the box. So he built a bigger, stronger box–one that no one could get into–and the man felt good. At last he was protecting the jewel as it should be. Upon occasion, when he decided that someone had earned the right to see it, he’d show it proudly. But they sometimes refused, or kind of smudged it, or just glanced at it disinterestedly.
“Much time went by, and then only once in awhile would one pass by the man, the aging man; he would pat his box and say, ‘I have the loveliest of jewels in here.’ Once or twice he opened the box and offered it saying, ‘Look and see. I want you to.’ And the passerby would look, and look, and look. And then he would back away from the old man, shaking his head.
“The man died, and he went to God, and he said, ‘You gave me a precious gift many years ago, and I’ve kept it safe, and it is as lovely as the day you gave it to me.’ And he opened the box and held it out to God. He glanced in it, and in it was a lizard–an ugly, laughing lizard.
And God walked away from him.
“Yes, there is a hell.”
(taken from Lois A. Cheney, GOD IS NO FOOL)
This story is about the precious gift of love. To love, means that there may be hurt, disappointment, and other things that may sully the gift, but the gift must be used. What was it I wrote earlier in the week from Erich Fromm, “Hate is not the opposite of love. Apathy is”? Not to care about others is a waste of the gift of love.
Besides love, there are other gifts from the Lord. This could be applied to any of those. If you have been handed a precious gift from the Lord, and everyone has, then use it for Him and His glory. Don’t let it become an “ugly, laughing lizard.”
Echoes From the Campfire
When the buzzards begin to collect it’s sure high time to watch out.”
–Ernest Haycox (A Rider of the High Mesa)
“So because you are lukewarm (spiritually useless), and neither hot nor cold, I will vomit you out of My mouth [rejecting you with disgust].”
–Revelation 3:16 (AMP)
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One man, committed unreservedly to God and His Word, can make an enormous difference for good in the lives of God’s people. One person can bring about victory, blessing and forward movement. We live in a day when we desperately need such a person. A person who will stand above the crowd, who will speak out and say, “thus saith the Lord,” despite what others may say about him. To be that person requires absolute loyalty and obedience to the Lord.
We live in times where there is a tendency for the younger generation to accept the status quo and lose the vision of the older generation. We are even seeing signs that they are not satisfied with the status quo and are chanting for more to be given them, yet without them having to do their part. Free education, free medical and health, free this and free that, but they do not understand or realize that there is nothing free.
I have been writing about compromise. I want to continue to look at compromise and throw in some thoughts about complacency. First, look at the following Scriptures:
“You shall make no covenant with them or with their gods. They shall not live in your land, because they will make you sin against Me; for if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare to you.”
–Exodus 23:32-33 (NASB)
If you would read Exodus 34:10-16, you would see that God commands that there be no compromise, that they should destroy the gods of the land, and do not intermarry with the people of the land. Now, possibly one of the saddest verses in all of Scripture is found in Judges.
“All that generation also were gathered to their fathers; and there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord, nor yet the work which He had done for Israel.”
–Judges 2:10 (NASB)
A generation of people that did not know the Lord. This was a generation, as someone wrote, “Was so entirely devoted to the world, so intent upon the business of it, and so indulgent of the flesh, in ease and luxury, that they never minded the true God and His holiness and so were easily drawn aside to false gods and their abominable superstition.” Instead of being filled with praise and wonder and grateful to the Lord of their fathers these people yawned with boredom, moaning, “Aw, we’ve heard all that before.”
The people wanted blessing without the sacrifice. They wanted luxury without obedience. They want entertainment rather that reverence. They are yawning in the face of God. It is not a yawn from being tired, it is a yawn of indifference, one of Satan’s most effective weapons. The generation that followed Joshua, and it is true of the generation of today, is one of lukewarmness, a complacency and apathy about Biblical truths. They have lost their first love and have replaced it with self. I think it was Ravi Zacharias who said that, “Spiritual amnesia inevitably produces spiritual apostasy.”
The nature of their failure was not intellectual ignorance; they are not uniformed. They, as people of today, know about the Lord; they have heard of His deeds, but they refuse to know Him or acknowledge Him. They have become complacent about the living God and had forgotten how to walk in fellowship with Him. In other words, they have lost touch with the Lord.
Erich Fromm wrote, “Hate is not the opposite of love. Apathy is.” Apathy is a great crippler. When people no longer care about the Lord, or care to be moral under the guidelines that He has set down they are a crippled people. Possibly the greatest rejection of God is when people become complacent in view of Calvary and the great sacrifice God gave with His Son for mankind.
The Saga of Miles Forrest
It took nearly two hours before we chugged into Silverton and I was able to get to a livery for a horse and head back to the scene of the robbery. Since the engineer was killed the fireman was able to get the train moving with one of the brakemen acting as fireman. I wasn’t worried about finding tracks, for a buckboard would be hard to hide, but I was concerned some about the hostages. I wanted to be sure to find them before night came for even though it was still summer, at this altitude it could get cold at night.
Following the tracks of the wagon wouldn’t be hard, but I figured that somewhere close they would discard it, split the money, and take off on horses and possibly have pack animals. Then the tracking would start. On top of that they were now charged either with murder or conspiracy to commit murder.
The outlaws had only two ways to go. They couldn’t follow the rails into Silverton and certainly couldn’t go south into the canyon. They could go east, but they would have to go overland quite a distance for there were no roads, only here and there some ruts into a miner’s camp. No, it had to be west, up toward Molas Lake and the road. How far they would travel with the wagon I didn’t know. It was two miles of non-road, overland travel to the lake. However, from there they had several options.
This was a time I surely wish I had Hawk with me. That horse was bred and trained for mountain travel. The horse I was riding was left in the livery by one of the inhabitants of Silverton that had a severe case of lead poisoning. It was a fair enough horse, but couldn’t compare a lick to Hawk. I urged him into an easy trot.
Even with a murder now on their record, I was real fretful about what might happen to the ladies with them. I had no clue as to their experience in the wilderness and looking up at the sky there could be a storm brewing that would hit sometime in the night. With that in mind, I gave the horse a little kick to hurry it along.
The tracks led gradually toward Molas Lake and it was on a continual but gradual upgrade. As I topped the ridge I could look down upon a low area where I could see the lake. Stopping I wanted to observe where they might have gone, and upon looking toward the north I spotted the wagon.
If there is such a thing as hurrying slowly, I did it. I was almost certain that none of the outlaws would stick around, but there was always that chance that a couple might be there for an ambush. It didn’t pay to hurrying too much, especially without taking time to observe the country.
Molas Lake is just off the road from Durango to Silverton. The wagon stopped at the northside of the lake. From the lake it was about six miles or so down into Silverton. The road continued on upward toward Red Mountain Pass and into Ouray. As I approached I could see two of the women sitting in the back of the way. I wondered where the third woman was.
They weren’t very alert; dozing I expected as I rode up on them. “You ladies all right,” I yelled brining my horse to a stop at the wagon.
Jumping to the ground, they began fixing themselves, trying to make them presentable. One of them, a lady dressed in greenish colored dress exclaimed, “Thank the Lord someone finally showed up!” She was making it sound like I took my lazy old time to find them.
The other lady was dressed a little more drab and that fit her face which looked as if she had been weaned on a dill pickle. She nigh shouted at me, “Why did you let those hoodlums kidnap us? They could have done all manner of evil!”
“I reckoned at the time that it was more prudent to let them take you, than it was to start shooting with you in-between me and the outlaws,” I replied, then gave her a smile. I wanted to say more, but held myself back. Looking around, I asked, “Where is the other lady?”
They pointed toward the lake. Before I left them to get her, I took my time to look around for tracks. There were six men with two pack animals. Then it dawned on me that they horses for the wagon weren’t there. Now that presented another problem. How to get the women into Silverton.
Giving the horse a nudge I started down toward the lake and noticed a figure, the woman, walking up toward the road. She happened to see them before I did–supply wagons coming down the road. I now applied a slight spur to the horse to get to the road before the woman. As the horse moved out from the lake I put it in the middle of the road hoping that the wagons would stop. One man, a horseback they might think an ambush was planned.
Then a man on the second wagon shouted, “There’s a woman walking up from the lake!”
The wagons stopped and I rode easily up to the lead wagon. After exchanging pleasantries I informed them that I was a Deputy U.S. Marshal, and told them what had happened.
“Do you have enough room for three ladies to ride?” I asked.
“Well, I don’t….”
Before he could finish I interrupted. “If not, three of your riders will have to get off. You are goin’ to take these ladies on down to Silverton.”
The woman who had been walking up from the lake was slightly winded due to the altitude. She sighed, then gave them a smile. “I’m Constance Fremont and I’d surely appreciate a ride.”
A man hoped down off the wagon. “Why shore,” he said then helped her up on the seat by the driver. “My name’s Lyle and that ol’ coot drivin’ is called ‘Rascal.'”
The other two women down at the abandoned wagon saw what was happening and started walking up toward the road. Within a few minutes they were perched on the seats of the other two wagons.
Rascal let out a shout, released the brake, snapped the reins and the wagons were off…