Friday, April 9: Go up, baldhead!

Early this morning after crawling out of my sleeping bag in sub-freezing temperatures, I quickly departed for the truck, to turn on the heat and get my old bones moving. Instead, God had another purpose to get me moving. Within the first quarter mile of driving down the road, I saw a bear walking across a snowfield. Though bears are plentiful in Yosemite Valley, I don’t get to see them often. They are so beautiful, yet at the same time, powerful and deadly. With that in mind, I thought I’d make today’s devotional a little more on the light-hearted side. At my advanced age, I can’t keep them serious all the time!


Speaking of advanced age, it’s difficult to walk around Yosemite, see all the school children here on field trips and remember what it was like to be that age. Most of you know exactly how I feel, for we can look back to those times easily, as they don’t seem so many years ago. Yet looking into the mirror, it sure appears that many years have slipped by. My face is wrinkled and the hair on top of my head is gone! Those unruly kids, even the ones on field trips in Yosemite, can make snide remarks about my fleshy dome, which doesn’t have any more hair on it than the majestic Half Dome towering above the valley floor. Elisha sure knew how I felt:


23 Then he went up from there to Bethel; and as he was going up the road, some youths came from the city and mocked him, and said to him, “Go up, you baldhead! Go up, you baldhead!”
24 So he turned around and looked at them, and pronounced a curse on them in the name of the LORD. And two female bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths.
 2 Kings 2:23-24

So, the devotional today is about treating your elders with respect! I guess I still have a lot of elders I need to respect, too. According to the Bible, we should love our enemies. In addition, we should love our neighbors as ourselves, and we sure do love ourselves more than we deserve! But if those neighbors keep calling you names, just come to Yosemite and call a bear over to maul them!  “Go up, you baldhead!”