From The Backwoods Pew

The rural South is often a maze of cultivated fields and timberlands, intersected by narrow roads, some paved, many still dusty dirt paths. Foresters find themselves driving many of these dirt roads and passing by these fields and timberland edges on a daily, if not hourly basis. Along this maze a vast array of wildlife also moves, often converging at a point in time and space with the forester. More specifically, it is usually the bumper, door, or the most expensive part of the forester’s truck, where the convergence takes place. More times than not, the wild animal cannot withstand the collision caused by the convergence. The result is referred to as road kill. Many jokes have been made about road kill and even some recipes. I will let others share those tantalizing tidbits. Let me, however, share these two pieces of advice: stay upwind, and don’t linger.

To linger, according to most dictionaries, is described as “to delay leaving.” We have all done that, haven’t we? Time to leave for an appointment, but the game is in the final seconds, so we have one foot outside the door, but both eyes inside. We linger until we are late.

Maybe it is the smell of cookies in the oven, and any idea of going out to mow the yard is forgotten. We would rather stay and enjoy the aroma, and wait to sample the culinary masterpiece; until a wooden spoon comes our way, chasing us out the door. Without a doubt, put

“game” and “aroma” together, and it is really, really hard to leave.

A few years ago, I was driving through the southeastern portion of

Virginia, along the typically narrow, curving secondary roads. The weather was warm. Up ahead, in the right-side ditch, a “convention” of buzzards was gathered along the roadside. They were celebrating the late game, that being a deer that had tried to cross the road. The deceased deer was actively decreasing, thanks to the heat and the enthusiastic buzzards. Upon my approach, the buzzards began to go airborne, and fly away. I proceeded to pass the deer, when out of the bottom of the ditch came the one who lingered. Slow to

pull himself away from the feast, he flew up into the road…and into the bumper of my truck…up onto my hood…across the windshield…and off my right-side mirror. What a mess! What a stench!

Road kill is nothing new, nor is it confined to the era of the automobile. King David saw some road kill in his day; he saw it in the lives of men, and how they traveled the path of life. He saw it in how they responded towards God, denying and rejecting his Lordship. Like road kill, they lay scattered across the landscape. He writes:

Psalms 14:1-3—The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none who does good. The LORD looks down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there are any who understand, who seek God. They have all turned aside, they have together become corrupt; there is none who does good, no, not one.

We would blanch at the idea of sitting a few feet downwind of a ghastly road kill, steaming in the summer sun—not wanting to leave, even when approaching you was destruction! Wouldn’t you want to fly away from it, get to some fresh air, and get to any place other than next to that stench? Yet, spiritually, we too often want to linger in the ditch with sin. Sin, like a rotting corpse that causes us to gag and hold our breath, still seems to pull us back into the ditch. We see others ruin their lives taking another drink, or taking another dose of illicit drugs. We see their lives falling into the gutter. But it doesn’t seem to scare us away. We linger. We reach for a bottle or a pill, and taking in a deep breath of the aroma of decay, we drop into the ditch. James said it like this:

James 1:14, 15—But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death.

Not a pretty picture, is it? When we hold to sin and resist God; or when we declare there is no God, no one to tell us what we can or can’t do; then we are nestled in tight with the road kill. We are covered with it, smelling like it; we are feasting on sin, and sin smells like death; and around the corner at any moment, judgment is approaching.

Flee now, don’t wait! Don’t linger at the road kill, holding on to sin for even a second longer. God offers something so much better. He offers to us a way out of the ditch, a way to remove the stench from our lives, a way to escape eternal death. He offers Jesus. Coming to God through Jesus, as Paul explains, is the difference. Why smell like road kill, when you can smell like “lifeeternal”?

II Corinthians 2:14, 15—Now thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and through us diffuses the fragrance of His knowledge in every place. For we are to God the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing.

That is the essence of the Good News, the Gospel, that there is a better breeze blowing, a better life waiting. Stop lingering at the road kill.

Excerpted from Pines, Prayers, and Pelts, Bradley Antill, author. Visit www.onatreeforestry.com