“Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” - 2 Timothy 2:15
January 18, 2016 - My friend Claude Lucas grows watermelons in the Sand Hills near Center, Texas. He grew almost a hundred acres this year at The One Gallus Ranch.(once owned by San Augustine Pharmacist, Harold Lee) Each box of his melons is stamped “What-A- Melon” and what melons they are! I got directions to the ranch from his wife Bonnie…take 711 from San Augustine, turn right on 1017, go two miles and turn left on 1011…
When I’d gotten about a mile from the ranch, I met an elderly man on the road and asked for further directions. “You’re almost there”, he said. “Just hang to the right and whatever you do, “stay with the woods”. (I was to stay on the road with the woods to my right.) As I drove away, he shouted back at me again, “Remember now… stay with the woods!”
I ignored all the roads that intersected mine and faithfully “stayed with the woods”. Finally, I entered a beautiful gate on a hilltop that led me into a breath-taking mixture of winding roads, pastures of grazing cattle and endless fields of watermelons. An old barn surrounded by a wood fence and large cedar trees revealed where an old home place had been. Claude and his workers were busily boxing and loading watermelons into the trailer of an eighteen wheeler.
Mother wrote “Stay with the Word” in every letter she sent me while I was in college and seminary and I’d been better off if I had always followed her advice. There are a lot of attractive roads along life’s journey, but we’ll wind up on the wrong one…
….if we don’t “stay with the Word.”
