Another Note from Lake Pleasant, AZ

Photo by Joe Venturo

View of Lemmon Peak from Catalina State Park

I am finding that I have certain presuppositions about different parts of the country—then, when we actually arrive in an area, I find that I was quite wrong. One of the overall examples of this trend is rain. We live in a wet country. When we visited Washington and Oregon in the fall, we survived almost eight weeks of virtually nonstop rain.

Being in the desert now, I had thought that we would have a very dry winter. Deserts are dry, right?

Not this week. It has been either cloudy or raining most of the time. I find myself wondering how the saguaros can take in so much water and still survive. Maybe that is why so many of them are rotting at the base!

Rain is extremely difficult in an RV. The trailer is small. The trailer is dark. The air is cold. But our busy lives must go on. It is at times like these—when we are cold, or antsy, or edgy, or stressed—that we make excuses for the “little” sins like laziness, backtalking your parents, being anxious, and generally giving up on life when the going gets tough.

To combat this tendency in my own life, I started a Scripture search in my Bible reading every morning. Each day, wherever I am in the Bible, I am looking for the answer to one key question: What are some reasons God says I should not grow discouraged in doing right? This week, I am in Acts. Here is the first answer, from Acts 14:1-7: I can stop being discouraged because I have examples of boldness—people who didn’t stray from the mission when the going got tough. Paul and Barnabas were Gospel-centered, and absolutely nothing could deter them from sharing and living the Good News of Christ. If we also are Gospel-centered, the devil can gain no foothold.

But as I am learning, it takes a trailer load of humility.