The Encampment
She was a young lady, barely knee-high to a grasshopper.
Her momma was off visiting relatives in the neighboring state. She was one of the last children living at home and wanted to fix breakfast for her Daddy and brother. They were cutting and hauling wood from the nearby forest.
It was early in the 1950s, but they still had an old cast iron wood stove. They didn't have indoor plumbing; no bathroom within fifty feet of the house. But poverty-stricken was not a label they would accept because it didn’t apply. In their minds, there was no use trying to fix something if it wasn't broken. And this stove was in every memory they had made in this kitchen.
It had been a vital part of thousands of meals down through the years and a backdrop to the many Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas dinners they had around the kitchen table. It was a stitch in the fabric of their country life.
She reached beside the stove to the stack of wood between it and the wall and put several pieces inside, but she couldn't find the coal oil.
She went and asked her Dad where it was. He told her it was in the back of the truck. He had refilled the can recently.
She grabbed the can of oil and went back to the house.
She doused the wood in the oil and lit a match. She bent down to put it on the wood. She got halfway there, and the fire went out.
She got another match, struck it, and bent down to put it on the wood, and it went out.
She struck another match and reached down to apply it to the fire. Again, the flame went out.
Several times, she tried. Several times, the match went out.
She went to get her dad. She told him how she couldn't get the fire lit in the stove. He came to the house to lend a hand.
He opened up the door and smelled the distinct smell of gasoline.
The two cans in the back of the truck didn't have distinct markings. Dad was used to taking a sniff and knowing which was which. This young lady was, at this point in her life, uninformed about such things.
After that, her Dad made sure to write the content of the cans on the side so they wouldn't have a close call like that again.
Sometimes, we don't know what God is protecting us from. We don't realize how different some situations could be without His intervention.
to those with angels encamping round about them,
- Caleb