Jason Amos has been wanting to take us hiking on The Little River Trail in the Smokies.  We went last week. 

The day was perfect.  The temperature all day felt like the Lord had turned air conditioning on all along the trail, just for us!  

Before we started on the hike, Jason wanted us to stop and look at a community of summer cabins, now abandoned, but maintained by the park service .  There was a row of cabins on both sides of a narrow road, all different and all delightful.  They were summer homes for families back before the park bought the property.  As I walked through them, I could picture children meeting their friends each summer and running from house to house and up and down the road.  I could picture them anxious to get to the mountains after a year in the city going to school.  John boy said it was kind of sad to him, as if ghosts were haunting the place.  (Of course he did!)

After we finished walking through the summer homes, we started our hike.  It was an easy hike with no hills (my kind of hike) and the Little River rushed along the whole way.  We found out it is one of the cleanest rivers around and indeed it looked pristine.

About half way up the trail, we saw hundreds of butterflies up ahead.  It was absolutely breath taking!  We finally saw what we thought was a nest of them.  They would fly away, then come back to the "nest".  Jason said they were eating, and I won't say what he said they were eating! 

A few feet further we saw another "nest" of them!  Again, they would light, then fly around in the woods.  I thought to myself, we would never have seen this phenomenal sight had we stayed at home, on the couch, surfing tv (and no, we don't do that anyway!).

We all proclaimed it "the perfect day"!  But as I looked back, it wasn't the Smoky Mountains, or the Little River, or the summer homes, or the breezes, or even the butterflies, as beautiful as they all were.

It was family.  When the boys were little we spent a lot of time hiking with them.  I have so many memories of days spent in the mountains, along rivers, in cool breezes, with my boys running ahead to find whatever boys find when they are turned loose to run and play...maybe even a nest of butterflies!

This time, my boys were grown men.  And they did, indeed, find a nest of butterflies.  

In my minds eye though, I could see a little blonde haired boy and a little dark haired boy, running up the Little River trail and that was the best part of the day!

​How many times have you looked at a long line and thought "I wish I were first in line."....
Or gone to a church dinner where they called your table last to go through the line....
Or come into a room and all the good chairs were taken...
Or gone to get food at a food truck and ended up at the back of the line...

What if you call "shotgun" in the car and the car wrecks?  Shotgun is the seat where most people die in a car wreck.

What if you go to a retreat and claim the best bed and end up being the only one to get bitten by bed bugs?

What if you go through the line first at the food truck and some of the best stuff came out at the end rather than the beginning?

On the other hand, what if you waited until last to claim a seat?  What if you waited last to get in line.  What if you took the last bed...the one furtherest away from the "bed bug bed"?

What if, when everything was over you stayed around to help clean up?

Just asking.

Matthew 20:16
Luke 14:7-11
Philippians 2:3-8
Mark 10:42-45
Mark 9:34-35