First Church of God

I awake to our final day on the trail.  I can tell Adam and Rob have been up for a few hours already when I see them stoking a roaring fire.  Yes!  It looks like the plans we made last night have been put into place.  It will take a total of 4 hours to heat up all the stones inside that fire. 

We eat breakfast, and then send the guys out for some quiet time without telling them our plans.  Then we set up the fly.  The fly is a bottomless tent about 4 feet high, 12 feet long, and 6 feet wide.  We put sleeping bags all around the bottom edge to make it air tight. 

After calling the guys back, we tell them to get their swim suits on and pack into the fly.  Sixteen half naked stinky sweaty men pack into this small little fly.  They still don't get what’s going on until Rob and Adam come into the fly with a pan of burning hot stones, a pan of water, and a bunch of pine branches.  We get the pine branches wet and slap the hot rocks.  Pine scented steam immediately fills the air around us.  We’ve made our own Indian sweat lodge.  The air is so thick with moisture you can’t see two feet in front of you.  The hot moist air clears our heads and cleans our pores, draining all the tenseness out of muscles that have been pushed and strained to the max.  When we can’t take much more we pile out of the fly, and with loud barbaric yawps we leap into the frigid lake water.  My breath is sucked out of me in a second.  It’s shocking and refreshing in the same moment.  Then we climb out of the lake and back into the sauna for another round.  This is just about one of the coolest things I’ve ever done.  It’s the ultimate conclusion to the adventure that has bonded us together as a band of brothers.

Indians used a sweat lodge to seek a vision from God.  How appropriate for us to end this trip in this way.  For a week we have prayed and asked God to give us words and visions to share with each other.  God has been faithful to speak so clearly to us. Our senses have been awakened to his voice.  And now I know that God is here in the lodge with us.  His Spirit is as thick as the pine scented steam.  We breathe Him in.  The love of our Abba Father is all around us.  He smiles at his sons, and laughs at our barbaric acts of joy! 

Can you hear the Father’s laughter echoing off the mountains?