I woke up in the morning. It was our second night in the mountains of Colorado. I was so excited to wake up for the new day. We had a great evening the day before and decided to clear out a little space in the trailer by moving a box of extra food into the back of the truck. The wind howled all night long but the weather forecast was for a bright day. We were preparing to hike my favorite trail in the Rocky Mountain National Park.
I stepped out of the trailer and went to get something from the truck. I saw that the bed cover was in tatters. A table that had been in the truck was on the ground. My first thought was thieves. My second thought was marshmallows. There was a bag of marshmallows for s’mores in the box that I had taken out the night before.
I looked more closely. The table had long gashes and teeth marks on its surface. It ruled out most thieves. I spy around. I felt like we were in the middle of town. We were near the mountains, but not that near. We had made a bad mistake in the wrong place. I spent the next hour cleaning up the truck. We had to wash off the cold drinks because they had bear slobber on them. I used duct tape to create a temporary cover for the truck bed from the remnants.
I have been looking for bears in the National Parks for years. I last saw one in 2002. I was frustrated that I got all the mess without any of the fun. I bet the bear was frustrated because all it looks like he got was a bag of marshmallows and a snout of pancake mix. I bought a new cover for the truck that is hard and made sure that we had no food in the truck until we got back to Texas.
Have you ever searched and tried to find something and then suddenly realized that it was near you all along. I was asleep just 10 feet from where the bear was mauling my truck. I missed it because the wind was making noise and I did not recognize the possibility of the situation I was in. Today, this week, try to look up, try to wake up, try to listen. God is stomping around and you might just be missing it because of the distractions.