Caching in the dark

Last night Rachel and I went down to Rocky Ford, CO to celebrate my sister-in-law's birthday. On the way back home, we stopped to find a geocache which can only be found in the dark. We weren't quite sure what we were getting ourselves into as we stepped from the vehicle and started following our gps, but we were excited. That excitement lasted until we realized the GPS was leading us to an outhouse...

Once we got there, we shone the flashlight around the area, and saw a reflector on a tree down the trail a ways. Knowing that was our clue we set off in that direction. As we got to that tree, we shone the flashlight around again and saw another reflector. We walked to that tree, then saw yet another reflector. Slowly we were led through the park by tree after tree reflecting light back at us to where the cache was actually stored.

On the way back to our car, we turned the flashlight off because the stars overhead were so bright. It was incredible seeing that many stars, and our only disappointment was that half the sky was covered by clouds. But we kept getting distracted by that glory by rustling sounds in the fields around us. Critters were on the move! I kept telling Rachel that it was only field mice, but she didn't care! Every time we heard something, she only grabbed my arm tighter.

Needless to say, we made it safely back to our car, and on the rest of the way home, I pondered through what we had experienced. In doing so, I noticed an analogy to life. Sometimes as we go through life, we really don't have a clue where we're going. We have an idea of where we'd like to end up, but the actual path there isn't clear at all. So we're left with a couple of options. One is that we could just stop moving forward, another is to go back, and yet a third is to move forward, following the light and trusting the One who created the path.

Without that flashlight, we couldn't have seen the path we needed to take. And without those markers on the trees, we wouldn't have known what direction to walk. As we were led further and further into the park, we had to trust that the cache owner was leading us in the right direction and that we would end up at the final location. There was one time where we couldn't see the next marker ahead of us, so we had to step out in faith trusting that we would see one, and sure enough, right around the next bend it was plainly visible!

Trust God - our heavenly pathmaker
Use your flashlight - the Word of God is a 'light to your feet'
When in doubt, take a step of faith in the direction you think you should go