I’ll admit it – I’m a backroads junkie. Whenever given the option of bumper-to-bumper, death-grip on the steering wheel, pray-I-survive-the-crazies interstate driving or a casual cruise down a not-so-well-known backroad where an occasional glimpse of wildlife is the highlight, I’ll pick the latter of the two every time. The church where I serve as pastor is roughly 35 miles of highway travel from my house, but if I cut through on what we locally refer to as “Rice Field Road”, I can shave about 11 miles and 15 minutes off my commute. I’m sure you can infer this from the slang title of the road, but “Rice Field Road” goes through – you guessed it – a bunch of rice fields. And down here in Louisiana, early-year rice fields often double as crawfish farms. Ah yes – mudbugs! The delicacy of dining in our beloved state!
I’m not sure if anyone ever wonders exactly where the food they put into their mouths came from – I think of it often which is why I try to kill or catch the majority of what we put on the table at the old Rollins household – but when you think of where crawfish come from, there’s no pleasant way to put it -they come out of the ooey gooey mud! These fields I drive past on my way to church sometimes are prime breeding and feeding grounds for slimy serpents, bugling bullfrogs, and a host of other critters that may lurk in such places. Needless to say, these fields aren’t exactly the most aesthetically pleasing attractions around. They are ugly. They stink. They serve a purpose, and that’s about all there is to say about them.
I’ve asked a dozen or so people if they recognized the location of the photo in the headline of this post, and zero of them were accurate. Some were certain it was taken as the sun sank into the Texas dirt past the waters of Toledo Bend…others believed it must have been on the banks of a beach somewhere other than here…but none of those surveyed on the whereabouts of the beautiful sunset even came close. I mean, when you think of the beauty of God’s creation, you don’t exactly link that with the critter-infested swampy smelling locale of a rice field/crawfish farm. Yes – the picture was snapped as God had a show-off session of making something that is normally unattractive into a thing of beauty.
And isn’t that just like God? He tends to take situations, predicaments, and even foul individuals and turn them into what folks consider the best thing, time, or person they’ve ever known. Only an all-powerful God can do that on a regular basis. I’m not sure about you, but I’m sure glad that God reached down into the muck and mire and rescued this old mudbug from the swamp of sin. As our focus this time of the year is on the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, can we purpose in our hearts to allow our maker to perform the same kind of act in our lives that he performed in that old rice field the day that photo was taken? He can take what is ugly, nasty, and vile in our lives and shine his goodness, forgiveness, and love into it making it a picture of beauty to behold. You think you’re too bad? A mudbug beyond the cleansing power of God? His promise to us is that if we will come to Him, He will never turn us away (John 6:37).
This Easter season, I sure hope you enjoy some extra time off from work, school, and the regular hustle and bustle of every-day life. Who knows? You may even enjoy a good old crawfish boil! Whether in a mudbug infested rice field, a gently flowing river, or somewhere in-between, cleaned up by God’s grace – I’ll see you in the Great Outdoors!
Rod & Staff Outdoor Ministries 