Do you remember some of those carefree days of childhood, when with a spirit of adventure and a lack of reasoning there wasn’t a thing you couldn’t accomplish…..in a day?
I have a good friend who lived in Colorado for a couple of years when he was a boy. He said that everyday when he and his younger brother would wake up in the morning and look out the window, they could see Pikes Peak! As the weeks and months went on, they became more and more intrigued with that gigantic mountain off in the distance…..In fact, Pikes Peak – and climbing it was all their daily thoughts were consumed with!
One morning they decided to pack a lunch and ride their bikes to Pikes Peak….. and climb it! After all, they can see it so clearly, it can’t be too far! Well, they started riding on their journey, so that they could climb the mountain and be home before dark. They pedaled those bikes as fast as they could….. 3 hours….. 4 hours….. By now they are already very tired and hungry, so they stop and eat their lunches. As they’re resting and eating they notice that the mountain doesn’t look any closer than when they started out in the morning! Feeling somewhat defeated, they headed home! They did make it home in time for supper and as they drifted off to sleep that night, I wonder if they were dreaming of what their next adventure might be!
“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.” 1 Corinthians 13:11
When I was about 11 or 12 years old, a friend helped me with what we thought would be an incredible adventure! We decided to build a raft and float it down the river – just like ”Tom and Huck”! (This would be a good place to mention that the ’river’ we were going to float down was just a stream and had places that were less than 10 inches deep!) Perhaps the smartest portion of our plan was to ”build” the raft next to the river – that way we didn’t have to haul it there! So, we carried a bunch of old boards to the river and made a platform. We needed something to make it float – and we found something! Behind my friends garage, his father had stacks of empty 2 gallon rectangle oil cans. They would would be be perfect and easy to tie onto the platform with twine! Soon our raft was ready for its maiden voyage!
We didn’t know how far down the river we would go – on our first trip, so we each packed a lunch just in case we went a long way. We had broomsticks to push the raft and help navigate as we started down the river – it was doing it, we were floating! We probably only went 150 feet when the water got really shallow….. A terrible scraping sound came from under the raft as the cans started ”popping” out everywhere. Our incredible raft adventure had come to an end….. We managed to catch all the empty cans and stack them back where we found them. And we always saved and reused the boards for another project, because….. we always figured that the next adventure would be even better!
Till Next Time…..
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