The Coyote Song
There exists a memory my heart has frozen beneath the surface. I don’t remember the details surrounding this moment in time such as the clothes I was wearing, the season of the year, what I had done earlier in the day… I don’t even remember how old I was. There are so many gaps in the memory my soul holds but the parts I do remember rest in contrasting colors, vivid and deep with no vague pastel hues.
My dad and I had gone for a walk in the woods behind my childhood home, it was later in the day but far from dusk. My home rested on a high hill, which then dipped down into a large field surrounded by trees. Beyond the tree line rested a forest with trails, streams, little waterfalls, wild ferns, deer, cows and coyotes. I never thought much of the cows or coyotes. The cows were usually confined behind a fence and the coyotes typically only came out at night. I knew there were many coyotes on the property because I could hear their chorus of songs echoing through the woods as I lay in bed. The sound of their song was almost like that of a lullaby until it stopped and the sounds of an innocent cow being taken down took over. My parents were fine for my brothers and I to walk in the woods together by day, but no one was to be out alone, especially at night.
As my dad and I walked through the woods, as we had done so many times as a family, we found ourselves turned around, stuck amidst a thorn patch… so now what should have taken us a short time to get home became a race to beat the darkness descending. My dad did not pause for a moment, he began carving a path through the center of the thorny thicket and asked me to wait as he worked, he didn’t want me to get scratched. So I waited and watched him work, noticing him working faster and harder despite the thorns. It wasn’t until I heard the first coyote “yip” did my heart begin to pound and fear begin to knock. Pretty soon the haunting song of the dark woods was loud and getting closer…did my dad stop? No. Instead he pulled me in closer behind him, careful to not allow any thorn to touch my skin.
He knew I was scared, he might have been concerned, but he never let me see and he never paused long enough to show fear. As he worked I kept looking on the hilltop ahead, the lights in my home were beginning to glow brighter and stronger and I wanted to be there. I wanted to be running up the hill, stepping into that beautiful light, smelling the delicious food my mom was making and wrap up in a warm blanket, far from darkness. Far from the coyote song.
I of course hadn’t felt this same longing for home as we walked by the waterfall. It’s hard to miss something when you are distracted by something else. I enjoyed the woods and the walks we shared beneath the trees by day, with light peaking through the leaves. I didn’t long for home until darkness fell. Evil only lurks in the shadows when there is light present…when dark is the only shade you see, evil can move about freely.
My friend this world that we live in is the deep forest and it is not our home. Yes there is beauty between the trees but with it a darkness that will continue to fall until we are called to the light-filled home on the hill top. When God created the Garden of Eden, it was not just a place teeming with light and life, it was a place where we could walk with God, be near Him and live in a beautiful land overflowing with provision and peace. Tragically darkness found a way in and God has fought to bring us back to a new garden ever since.
Do you think the evil that worked so hard to tear us away from God is happy with the notion of a new garden, one he can’t enter? No, not likely. So what does he do? Try to lure us like a siren, with the things of this world. Darkness can’t give you anything that compares to what the Father can, but then again that’s not it’s goal. Darkness simply wants us apart from our Father…not because it wants us…it just doesn’t want the Father to have us. The enemy has used many things to keep us enchanted by the woods of this world, things to keep our attention from the light on the hill…people, places, and things that are so perfectly placed in our life that deep deep down there is sometimes or often times a part of us that fears losing what we have in this life. Do not be fooled. The serpent tricked Adam and Eve into biting the forbidden fruit…dare I say the enemy’s methods haven’t fallen far from that tree.
The enemy wants for you and I to continue to believe lies about our God, our Father. He doesn’t want for us to believe that Heaven is our home, that the joy we feel on this earth could ever be matched. The truth he doesn’t want to sink in…
The beauty we experience on this earth is but a whisper of what our Creator is making in our new home, the new garden, and the joy we fill on this earth is but a taste.
As times seem to grow darker in the woods of this earth, reach for your Father. As you hear rumors of wars and face daily battles in flesh and spirit, reach for your Father. As you feel fear knocking and then pressing on the door to your soul, reach for your Father. He is preparing a place for you, a home like one you have never known, and with every passing day as darkness grows thicker, the light of our home is becoming brighter.
Evil can see the light on the hill clearly for it knows how the story ends, and when it realizes the distractions of this world do not have you in its clutches…and sees your eyes fixed on the light ahead…it yips and yells and screams and puts obstacles in your path sometimes as thick and thorny as a briar patch. Do not fear those sounds or obstacles, for not a thorn will scrape you, though there be many, for Jesus has already gone before you. He not only made a way through the thicket of sin, He is the only way through. Darkness will still fall, coyotes will still sing their haunting song, but…
If you say, “The Lord is my refuge,”
and you make the Most High your dwelling,
no harm will overtake you,
no disaster will come near your tent.
For he will command his angels concerning you
to guard you in all your ways;
they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.
Psalm 91:9-12 | ESV
I still remember the moment my dad pressed through the last thorny vine, the sigh of relief while still trembling from fear. My dad didn’t yell for me to start running for the hill, even though I wanted to, given we were now in complete darkness. No, he simply turned on his flashlight, put his arm around me, and started to walk the tree line till we reached the path to the top of the hill. The dark didn’t make him walk faster, he carried light with him. Our Savior does not call us to live in fear, but recognize the light we each carry within us. It’s the light we carry and the way in which we carry it that will impact those around us.
Everyday we are surrounded by people who are standing in the dark, unable to move. Walk alongside them in love, not fear, and share the light with them, the truth that will help them to move from the deep dark woods and closer to the hilltop.
My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.”
Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”
Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
John 14:2-6 | ESV
And you want to know something? Once we stepped inside our home that night, my mom was waiting to hug us. Dinner was not cooking but prepared and waiting for us at the table. What I had hoped would be waiting for me from the thorn patch of the dark woods, ended up being far better than I had imagined.
