(Story Time by Bro. Ed is primarily based on true stories from his past.)
For What Has God Prepared You?
It was mid June. I had just finished the tenth grade at Mabelvale, and we were moving from where I had lived all my life to a "farm" on the North Fork of the Saline River. We had eighty acres but now we would have much more to "farm." We had already made one trip to move our entire household furniture in the back seat of a car but it was the "farm" stuff that was going to take awhile. We had an old (it was old even then) iron wheel log wagon on which we had built a solid floor just for the occasion. David, my oldest brother, and I had the privilege of moving the pigs. We had the use of our family vehicle which of course was a pickup. What else would you use to transport a family of ten? (Five in the front and five in the back unless it was raining and then it was ten in the front!) Our pickup was a '51 Dodge with a caved-in front bumper...now that's another story!
Dave and I had piled the bed of the old Dodge full of "farm" stuff from the barn and then had arranged yet more stuff on the wagon so as to have a spot in the middle to put our pigs, one of which was quite large. Since I was too young to have a driver's license I got to be the one to ride on the wagon with the pigs and stuff and try to keep them from jumping off while we drove some thirty miles to our new place. We knew several miles of this trip would be on Hwy. 5, which at that time was a concrete road. Now God had blessed us in that the new interstate had just opened another section, which took the heavy traffic off the part of Hwy. 5 we would be traveling on. Well, in spite of that we were able to cause quite a traffic jam from time to time. By the time we headed out it was already getting hot and the pigs were getting stressed out. I don't know if you have ever listened to the sound that four steel wheels make when pulled over a gravel road or not but it's not as bad as when you are on a concrete highway. Had it not been for the recent rain we, no doubt, would have set fire to the grass along the road from all the sparks created by steel on concrete. People could hear us coming for an hour before we passed their place. Folks would be standing out in the yard, some kids leaning on the fence, just to see what was coming and making all that noise. We had filled several 30-gallon milk; containers with water and every little bit we had to pull off the road and pour water over the pigs to cool them down. It was just about dark by the time we crossed the river and headed up the hill to our new place. I don't know who was the happiest - David, me or the pigs!
Have you ever wondered why you have traveled some of the roads in your past? Could it have been that God was preparing you for some future task? For me, I think it was to prepare me to be a pastor! What about you?
The Little Girl and the Old Man
It had been a wet fall, in fact, it was the wettest year on record for the state of Arkansas and on this particular late November morning it was unusually cold. It was still dark as the old man and young girl left the house to make the trip several hundred yards back in the woods to a deer stand the old man had built in the hot summer three years earlier. Because of the freezing temperature, not only were they carrying a rifle and the heavy backpack which contained all kinds of stuff one might need (those items were always carried but never used) the old man had brought along a bulky sleeping bag in hopes of keeping the young girl from freezing to death, as well as a fold-out stool. They moved slowly up the hill in the dark using only the light from a small flashlight to guide them on the clearly marked trail until at last they came to the twenty-foot-tall deer stand. Under the watchful eye of the old man the young girl climbed the ladder first. The old man then made two painful trips up the ladder, because in the spring he had undergone surgery on his left knee and had a bone spur removed from his left ankle, neither of which had brought much relief from the ever-present pain, to bring up the stool and sleeping bag. Once settled in, he spread the sleeping bag on the floor of the deer stand and the young girl crawled in and quickly was fast asleep. As the old man sat in the cold darkness tears filled his eyes as he lovingly looked at the sleeping bag on the floor. His thoughts raced back through the years when in another place and a long time ago he had sat with his own son, and later his daughter, in the deer woods. Having been retired for several years, he now had more time to think about his family and things he wished he had and had not done. He for sure knew he could have done better by his wife and their two children but at the same time painfully realized that life does not allow for a redo. He had - long before this cold November morning - resolved to do his best to get it right this time.
At last the sun began to rise and light began to push the darkness away. Although the old man had hunted from this stand, no one had ever harvested a deer here. The old man was hopeful that this just might be the day. Now the young girl sleeping in the bag on the floor was no stranger to deer hunting even though she was just nine years old. She had taken her first deer with a crossbow when she was seven and number two with a rifle at age eight, as well as, number three, a four-point, last month with a muzzleloader. At last the quietness of a calm morning was broken by the sound of a gray squirrel running around as it forged for an acorn on the forest floor. Then suddenly in the distance the old man caught sight of antlers as a buck was moving through the woods some hundred yards away. Very softly he called the young girl by name as he touched the sleeping bag, gently wakening her. She knew why they were there and was immediately awake. She stood slowly and quietly to her feet and began searching the woods for a sight of the buck as the old man lifted the rifle to the shooting window. But, the buck quickly disappeared in a valley below. The girl never saw the deer and the old man knew it would have been the biggest buck yet for her. The two of them stood side by side in the cold on that November morning as each had their thoughts of what might have been. After what seemed a long time, though in reality no more than five minutes, the buck suddenly reappears. This time the young girl catches sight of the buck as it slowly walks down the valley and is now in plain sight. As she positions the rifle and gets ready for a shot, the old man makes a grunt sound stopping the buck in its tracks. The old man - looking through his binoculars - has a full view of the deer, but she cannot find the buck in the scope. The deer begins to walk again and once more he stopped the buck by the grunt sound, but again the girl cannot get a shot. This happens two more times as the deer moves out of sight. Just then that buck slowly turns around and begins to retrace his tracks. When the deer seemed to be in a spot where she could get a good shot, the old man gave another grunt and stopped the deer for the last time. With the buck standing broadside at one hundred ten yards the girl takes the shot. She thought she hit it but was not sure. Once more on this cold morning tears began gathering in the eyes of the old man, but this time they were tears of joy because as he watched through the binoculars, he knew the young girl had just gotten her biggest buck yet because he saw it fall after running about forty yards. Before the two of them climbed down the ladder the old man and young girl bowed their heads and thanked God for the privilege of enjoying what He had created and for making memories they will cherish. And, maybe someday, bring tears to the eyes of an older woman as she looks back on this experience with the grandfather who loved her so much and strived to get it right!
