Pastor Bo WagnerIt was a cold night near the end of winter. The days had been unseasonably warm, a blessed prelude to spring, but also a lure for unsuspecting and unprepared wanderers. My family and I came home from church, and as we made our way down the hill to our home I saw a fire flickering through the trees just across the river. I knew there was an oft-used campsite over there, and remarked “someone is out camping tonight; it is really pretty cold for that.”
As soon as we parked the vehicle in the driveway and disembarked, I heard a voice shouting, “Hey! Hey over there! We need some help!”
My initial reaction was caution and paranoia. This seemed like every out-in-the-woods horror tale to ever grace the silver screen. A voice calls out from the darkness the innocent and unsuspecting would-be heroes make their way out into the trees the chainsaw fires up, and all of the good guys are cut to bits while the people watching in the theater seats are saying, “Dude, that was dumb; never follow a voice out into the dark woods in the middle of the night!”
But then I remembered that the voice from the unknown personage was a many many mile walk from civilization on that side of the river. I figured that the average horror-film bad guy would not be quite so energetic.
So I made my way down to the banks of the river and called across, “Hey! What’s the problem!”