Never Alone

Coon hunting at night will make a grown man feel confident right up until the exact moment he realizes he has absolutely no idea where he is.

A few years back, me and two other fellas decided we were gonna slip off and try some “promising new ground” over near the Virginia and West Virginia line. Now anytime a hunter says “promising new ground,” what he usually means is: “I have never stepped foot in this place, but I’ve got a feeling this could either be amazing or end with us in someone's front yard at 2 in the morning with dogs treeing and their cat up a tree.”

Naturally, we loaded the dogs up anyway.

We got there all excited, cut the dogs loose, and started easing down an old road that looked like it had last seen traffic sometime during the Carter administration. The dogs were moving quick, and rolled out through those mountains good. Before long they got treed way off in the distance.

So we started walking.

And walking.

And walking some more.

At one point I’m pretty sure we crossed three hollers, two county lines, and think we saw an airplane fly over with a banner that said "Eat at Joe's Calabash." One of those mountains was so steep I leaned forward to climb it and nearly kissed the ground like I was the pope praying over it.

We finally got to the dogs, found the coon, and figured we still had time for one more cast. That right there is the sentence that has launched thousands of bad hunting decisions.

We turned the dogs back toward the truck and cut them loose. They ran about twenty feet in the right direction, stopped, looked back at us like rebellious teenagers, and then blasted the exact opposite way.

“Good,” one of us said. “That’s exactly what we wanted.”

So off we went again.

A long while later they treed deeper than before. By now we were tired, scratched up, sweaty, and discussing selling our dogs and just playing cornhole professionally. We finally got the coon, pulled out our Garmin, and tried plotting the quickest way back to the truck. The problem was those mountains had cliffs, thickets, and enough deadfall timber to make a billy goat file a complaint.

Proverbs 3:5-6 came to mind: “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.” Because buddy, our understanding had officially clocked out for the night.

Finally, after stumbling through enough brush to exfoliate down to the bone, we popped out onto a dirt road that wasn’t even showing on the Garmin. We didn’t know where it went, but at that moment it looked like Interstate 81 to us.

We figured east ought to get us closer to the truck, so we started walking. About a half mile in, we were joking that this road might lead all the way to Albuquerque when we spotted a sign up ahead.

At first we thought it was a political sign. You know the kind. But when we got close enough to read it, we absolutely lost it laughing. The sign said: “Elect Jesus for Savior.”

Now months before that, our church brotherhood director had done a fundraiser for missions selling those signs for people to put in their yards. Our church was at least 25 miles from where we were. Yet there we stood, in the middle of absolute nowhere near the Virginia and West Virginia line, staring at one planted beside a dirt gas well road in the dark.

Hebrews 13:5 says: “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.”

And standing there under those stars with tired dogs and sore legs, God reminded us He meant exactly what He said.

You see, when Jesus died on the cross, the Bible says the veil in the temple was torn from top to bottom. Matthew 27:51. That veil represented separation between God and man. But through Christ’s sacrifice, the way was opened for relationship with God. Jesus became our High Priest making intercession for us. Hebrews 4:14-16.

And He didn’t stop there. He sent the Holy Spirit to dwell within believers.

1 Corinthians 6:19 says: “What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you…?”

That means a child of God is never abandoned. Never forgotten. Never walking a road alone.

Now every road in life doesn’t show up on the map we planned. Some places get lonely. Some valleys get dark. Sometimes you look around and realize you’re a whole lot farther from comfort than you intended to be.

Psalm 139:7-10 reminds us there is nowhere we can go beyond God’s presence.

Even out in the middle of nowhere… God already has a sign there waiting on you.

So maybe today you feel spiritually turned around. Maybe life has carried you farther than you planned. Maybe you’re walking through a lonely stretch wondering if God still sees where you are.

Friend, consider this story your sign today:

The same God who could plant hope on a forgotten dirt road is with you wherever you are walking.