RIDIN' FOR THE BRAND



I guess I have a little gypsy in my soul.  When the winter begins turning into summer its time for me to
hook up the RV and head for the open road.  We don’t have much spring in south Texas. One week the
Canadian folks open the gate and another “front” moves through dropping the temps into the 30’s;
burrrrr!  30 is “cold” when the relative humidity hangs around 98%.  The next week they close the gate
and it starts raining and from there the temperature climbs into the upper 90’s.  When that happens it’s
time for us to start scheduling matches and Cowboy Church in the mountains of Colorado.
The first stop in this annual trek is the “Siege at San Juan”, a match shot just outside of Montrose,
Colorado.  This match is a challenge, both for the standpoint of shooting and attempting to witness.  
These folks believe in itty bitty targets placed far away.  Its not that they are contrary to the Christian
witness, they’re not.  They are ambivalent.  For a cowboy from the “Bible Belt” portion of south Texas this
presents its own set of challenges.  Sometimes I wonder if they understand what they are seeing when
you attempt to live your Christian ethics.  It is similar to living as a Christian in the days of wood ships and
iron men.  In those days, and continuing into this present time, there was and is a rowdy element that
saw courtesy as a sign of weakness.  To them the caring individual was someone to be taken
advantage.  Shooting this match brings with it its own unique set of difficulties.  Prissy and I usually
emerge stronger for the exposure.
The bigger challenge for this match was the altitude.  Now where I’m from, if I get much over 100 feet, I
get a nose bleed.  To say the costal plains of south Texas are low would be like describing Mt. Sinai and
inconsequential.  There is simply not much elevation change in that part of Texas that ends at the Gulf of
Mexico.  The altitude on the firing line at “The Siege” is 6600 feet.  I keep running out of gas!  It’s difficult to
have much of an attitude about anything when you can’t breathe.
We survived the warm days, cool nights and thin air of Montrose and headed for the “warmer” clines of
Tombstone, Arizona.  To say that Tombstone was warm would be like calling hell “moderate.”  After
completing a match here I fully understand how Tombstone got its name.  To get from Montrose,
Colorado, to Tombstone Arizona we had to cross the desert of northern Arizona.  Welcome to hot rocks
and an indication of things to come!  
We were humming along like we knew what we were doing when some folks pulled along side of us and
started waiving their arms and pointing back to the travel trailer.  Looking back I could see this pink stuff
flying out from under the RV like smoke from the exhaust.  Pink?  Where was that coming from?  Pink just
doesn’t fit when you’re trying to be a cowboy!
After examining the underside of the RV I found that the sheet metal sealing the frame and the floor from
the outside air was being pealed back by the wind.  All that pink stuff was the insulation.  The wind had
caught the front edge of the metal and started rolling it back in the same way you roll the covers from your
bed at night.  What a mess!  I had about six feet of metal where the rivets had pulled through and it was
rolled back; too much hanging down to continue on and much too much remaining to simply tear it all out.
I’m usually a pretty fair hand at improvising.  Experiences from my youth on a tractor and around all the
assortment of equipment necessary for feed and cattle are a pretty fair teacher.  I generally carry enough
tools to handle most roadside emergencies, but rivets and sheet metal are not in the mix.
“What are you going to do?” Prissy asked.  I didn’t have a clue.  “Think!” I said to myself.  Nothing -- blank.  
OK, Lord, I could use a little help here.  I looked down at my feet as a feeling of helplessness washed
over me.  There at the toe of my boot was the mashed cap from a beer bottle.  Well, if the good Lord can
make a jackass talk He must be able to make use of a discarded and mashed beer bottle cap.  I picked it
up and rolled it around in my hand.  Then it hit me – a washer.  I grabbed a screwdriver and a hammer.  
Bang – knocked a hole in the cap.  Grabbed a socket, a ratchet, and a self tapping screw and put that
pealed sheet back into place.  It held – how about that?  In less than five minutes we were on the road
again; this time without the pink stuff flying around.
As the zip-zip-zip of the center stripe became monotonous, my mind went to Abraham, Isaac, and Mt.
Sinai.  How did he know?  Sacrifice time and as the boy who was the product of God’s miraculous
previous intervention said to his father,  “Look, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt
offering?" (Gen 22:7 NKJ)  Abraham answered his son, “My son, God will provide for Himself the lamb for
a burnt offering." (v.8)  Jehovah – Jireh, God will provide.  My eyes filled with tears as I changed lanes and
remembered another hill where the Lamb of God cried out, “It is finished.”  Once again, God had
intervened and provided for Himself a lamb and the price for redemption was paid.  Jehovah-Jireh, God
will provide – God did provide.  Even now I can close my eyes and see that old mashed up cap from a
beer bottle at the toe of my boot.  “Thank you,” I whisper, “for providing exactly what is needed.”  The
problem is not God providing when we are faced with need.  The problem is our ability to recognize a
blessing when its sitting right at the toe of our boot.

© Carl H. Lenz, 2007
GOD PROVIDES