F4S: Okay, so There are Some Dangers with Rivers, Lakes and Seas to be Aware of. Yes, Oftentimes Along the Banks, or in Tributaries or Swirling Eddies You Come-across Em.

Tuesday, May 7, 2019

Okay, so There are Some Dangers with Rivers, Lakes and Seas to be Aware of. Yes, Oftentimes Along the Banks, or in Tributaries or Swirling Eddies You Come-across Em.

Walk on.. not alone or with those who keep pullin' ya down.  Go forward, win the good battles you face.  Get past the muddy danger zones. 

My two brothers ..Kev and Kyle and I.. we used to get in some fairly serious mud-fights around river waters and lakes. 

Been called water-kids with a water dog (a shepherd named, Blitzen), but sometimes it was really more about mud or a horse trough with us boys. 









Yup, at times, like you probably also did... we’d have a tug of WAR ..over something like a mud-hole or bathtub for watering horses at.. and we'd find ourselves waste deep in the mud at some So Cal River..flingin' that stuff at other kids who also gladly join in, who enjoyed this pastime. 

As was our custom, we'd together do at least 100 miles down the Colorado River every year at Easter time.. down to Mexico with a bunch of other Tom Saywer Camp kids. 
My grandfather Bill started it, and then my dad owned and ran this camp biz (more on that here). Dad would enjoy driving the ski boat the whole time for the kids on four to six rail-road tie rafts that we'd built and traveled south on... so he didn’t always see the gnarly battles with the flinging of mud at the guys on the other side. When he was a kid, he was in em too, so of course he understood.  
Been stuck in mud at the Devil's Gate Dam before. Needed a little help that time. But I remember one time while in the heat of it all (mud flyin').. while getting stuck and s l o w ly sucked-in ..up to my waste in the mud, and then up to my chest as a mud fight raged on. 
Didn't really take it seriously. How can you, it's kid's a mud fight. And we all pretty much were laughing the whole time while still flingin' and whipping some soggy fast balls at those guys “the enemy”..chuckling out loud I was, that nature had somehow actually handicapped me to almost a standstill. It had tightly grabbed 'hold of me. Is this happening for real? Naww. No way! Oh yes -- WAY! 
That rubbery clay like mud was a little different this time..more rubbery-like. I was stuck, but not like before. It was holding me at bay and gradually sucking me downwards the more I tried in my own power to get above it to free myself. It can happen -- slowly gettin' stuck in near-quick-sand. And that was one time I actually needed some help to out of there.. help with a long two by four and it took a little while too.. for my buds to tug and TUG me on out. Embarrassing. With mud all over the face, it was sorta like a rescue. 

Here's what to do. Listen, in certain areas near an eddy or a muddy river bank where you can find so called "jelly-sand" (near-quick-sand) is, you can just walk fast over some of it.. not really sinkin' in much. But you have to keep on walking. If you are more on the edge of it, then keep goin' instead of ceasing to walk over it. Man, you would start to sink down in the crud, and then might even need some friends to throw you a line to pull you out. 

Now in a context where the Colossian believers were starting to get stuck.. sucked on down by an amalgamation of spiritual weirdness ..a quicksand of Gnosticism, Judaizer-legalism, religious heresy, mysticism and asceticism, the Apostle Paul warned those people of the Lycus Valley saying, “As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving.” Col. 2:6-7 nkjv

Be on the move forward, not sideways or backwards! Together with the body of Christ -- in a healthy Bible teaching church. Get your feet on the solid Rock (the Jesus Christ of the Bible), get yourself on stable ground in the Word of God. Come to Him. Have you gotten distracted away a bit.. taken a stride from the Master's side? Turn and trust -- come back to Him. Get back to your roots, believer, back to the basics of simply walkin' securely.. instead of gettin’ all sucked-into danger. Now is good. Return today, get home before dark. 

Listen, Jesus walked and overcame. You too were born to walk in victory--you were created by Him to win in the battles of life!  

At the beaches you shuffle your feet through the sands cuz the dangers under-neigh the water could be riptides, skates, stingrays or bigger sharks some 35 yards out. But at different Southern State rivers like the San Gabriel, the Colorado, and Santa Ana River etc the dangers could be ‘quick aka Jelly Sand.” We all love gettin’ in the water when it’s hot out, but be cautious and vigilant, prayerful.. especially with all the children playing around you there.        

There was once this Texas man that was killed by gettin' stuck in Jelly-Sand on the San Antonio River not all that long ago.  

Did you hear about, Mr. Jose Rey Escobedo? He went missing back on July 7, 2015 around 10 a.m. On July 8, police received a call reporting a light blue car had been parked underneath the San Antonio River Bridge in Goliad County. After succumbing to his battle, eleven game wardens found him on the 11th in South Texas