Algonquin
Feb14 by justhappeneduponthis
The camp was all set. Tent. Canoe beached. Fire crackling away. And Pete was puzzled. He and Brent hadn’t done this for years on a summer’s holiday weekend extended by a few more days.
Work had separated them to distant communities a decade ago. Reunions had been sparse. New friends. Children. But the phone call had come back in April. Brent had seemed really keen, and arrangements for Algonquin Park just fell into place.
It had been great to rehearse the old tales as they paddled the first two lakes and hit a three kilometre portage before camp. Second day much the same. Pete had wondered about some special agenda in this get together. There had also been a distancing over the years over religion. He had had a profound conversion experience in his late twenties. The old friends had drifted away in awkwardness. He had even wondered whether he might lose Brent.
Jocular supper clean-up. Nothing beat minute steaks and golf ball potatoes over a camper stove in the northern fresh air. Brent offered the aluminum coffee pot for another time, but his buddy just patted his stomach and waved him off.
“Pete you’ve got to do one thing for me. Teach me how to die.” That which followed, much to Pete’s surprise, was an account of a discovered tumour, inoperable, in the brain.
“Brent I can’t do that. Everyone’s case is so unique. The C word seems always to bring on immediate debilitating fear. We have heard other stories. Sudden news. Swift decline. Gone. But let me tell you about my own grandmother and her extraordinary recovery from surgery…”
“…Wow Pete, I didn’t know all of that about Mrs. Michaelson.”
“So buddy I don’t want to tell you about dying. I want to tell you about real living. It starts out seeming hard to believe that one might have a quality relationship with the risen Christ. But know this. He left that cross, came out of that tomb and filled his friends’ hearts with images of heaven and home. Forty days. Then he was gone. Ascended out of their sight, but still very much alive. And open to their prayers, and making His presence known in whispers to the inner man, bits of scripture, conversations with others and rhythms of the Holy Spirit.
Eternal life starts now for the asking, not the earning. We become convinced that we are involved in something much grander than the present life. At a time God determines, we will take the surprising portage of death and come out the other side to a much more expansive territory with rejuvenated vigour and hope.
Yeah…real living. Starting now and never ending. Do you want to talk about it? Keep on going along this line?”
Brent nodded without saying a word. For the next moment neither had a rejoinder. Peeper frogs filled in the gap. An August night sky crisply sparkled in a way unmatched anywhere else. Both knew that the Creator, benevolent and involved, had become the third Person at the camp-site.
A loon was calling to its mate at the far end of the lake.
Feb14 by justhappeneduponthis
The camp was all set. Tent. Canoe beached. Fire crackling away. And Pete was puzzled. He and Brent hadn’t done this for years on a summer’s holiday weekend extended by a few more days.
Work had separated them to distant communities a decade ago. Reunions had been sparse. New friends. Children. But the phone call had come back in April. Brent had seemed really keen, and arrangements for Algonquin Park just fell into place.
It had been great to rehearse the old tales as they paddled the first two lakes and hit a three kilometre portage before camp. Second day much the same. Pete had wondered about some special agenda in this get together. There had also been a distancing over the years over religion. He had had a profound conversion experience in his late twenties. The old friends had drifted away in awkwardness. He had even wondered whether he might lose Brent.
Jocular supper clean-up. Nothing beat minute steaks and golf ball potatoes over a camper stove in the northern fresh air. Brent offered the aluminum coffee pot for another time, but his buddy just patted his stomach and waved him off.
“Pete you’ve got to do one thing for me. Teach me how to die.” That which followed, much to Pete’s surprise, was an account of a discovered tumour, inoperable, in the brain.
“Brent I can’t do that. Everyone’s case is so unique. The C word seems always to bring on immediate debilitating fear. We have heard other stories. Sudden news. Swift decline. Gone. But let me tell you about my own grandmother and her extraordinary recovery from surgery…”
“…Wow Pete, I didn’t know all of that about Mrs. Michaelson.”
“So buddy I don’t want to tell you about dying. I want to tell you about real living. It starts out seeming hard to believe that one might have a quality relationship with the risen Christ. But know this. He left that cross, came out of that tomb and filled his friends’ hearts with images of heaven and home. Forty days. Then he was gone. Ascended out of their sight, but still very much alive. And open to their prayers, and making His presence known in whispers to the inner man, bits of scripture, conversations with others and rhythms of the Holy Spirit.
Eternal life starts now for the asking, not the earning. We become convinced that we are involved in something much grander than the present life. At a time God determines, we will take the surprising portage of death and come out the other side to a much more expansive territory with rejuvenated vigour and hope.
Yeah…real living. Starting now and never ending. Do you want to talk about it? Keep on going along this line?”
Brent nodded without saying a word. For the next moment neither had a rejoinder. Peeper frogs filled in the gap. An August night sky crisply sparkled in a way unmatched anywhere else. Both knew that the Creator, benevolent and involved, had become the third Person at the camp-site.
A loon was calling to its mate at the far end of the lake.
