Every July, my two sons and I drive up to a reservation in the White Mountains of Arizona for a guys-only camping vacation. On the second night of our trip one year, the three of us sat around a roaring fire. It had been raining off and on the whole weekend, but we’d brought plenty of firewood with us. My older son, Parker, made sure the fire was always crackling.
“Where’s the rest of the wood?” he asked, adding more logs to the fire.
“It’s all over there, behind that tree,” I said, pointing to the spot where we’d piled and covered it to protect it from the rain.
“That’s where I’ve been getting it,” Parker said. “But where’s the rest? We brought more than that, didn’t we?”
“No,” I said, sharing a look with my younger son, Cory. “That’s it. Are we running low?”
“This is the last of it,” Parker said. “It’s all gone.”
Oh no! I thought. I hadn’t been keeping an eye on our supply, hadn’t realized Parker was using it all up so fast. We had two more days of our trip to go! The sun was setting fast, and the night would be cold. We stood around the fire, wondering what to do.
“Can’t go to the store. It’s closed for the night,” said Cory. “Can’t gather anything from the forest. It’s too damp.”
We could go looking for other campers—but how much would any of them be able to spare? “We’d better start praying,” I said.
The three of us bowed our heads. “God,” I said, “please keep us warm tonight. Please help us find some wood.”
“In abundance,” Cory added emphatically.
I gave Cory a strange look, but before I could say “amen,” a pickup rumbled up. I hadn’t even heard it approach over the crackling of the fire and the blowing of the wind. An elderly Navajo man got out. “Do you folks need any dry firewood?” he said. His truck was full of it. He gave us enough to last the rest of our trip—practically for free.
“Funny thing is, I don’t know why I even drove down this old road,” the man said. “I guess I just knew you needed the wood.”
We certainly did. And now we had it—in abundance.
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