Spirit of Adventure

Life can sometimes seem like a series of adventures, and we sometimes cannot know the outcome, but we can be confident that God does and He is working everything for our good and His glory. Psalm 37 contains these words:
3 Trust in the Lord, and do good; Dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness.
4 Delight yourself also in the Lord, And He shall give you the desires of your heart.
5 Commit your way to the Lord, Trust also in Him, And He shall bring it to pass.

Later in the chapter, we can read:
23 The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, And He delights in his way.

This is Columbus Day, 2024, a day that has been aside to celebrate the journey and the achievements of a man who desired to be obedient to God and share the gospel of Christ.  So, he set out on an adventure and discovered a land far away from his home country.  

David Jones is an adventurer, too - he just didn't know the type of adventure he would be experiencing at the time he set up to drive from Boiling Springs, South Carolina to Johnson City, Tennessee - generally about a 2-hour drive. 

His mission: to attend his daughter's wedding. USA Today quotes Jones as saying, "I think every dad would do everything they could to get to their daughter's wedding," adding, "Like the scripture says, 'With God, anything is possible.' I think this was a prime example of that."

The day was Friday, September 27.  He knew the weather was bad, as a result of Helene, so he fired up the generator in Boiling Springs, where he and his wife and mother had just moved, and set out for Johnson City - without phone service. 

As he began to exit South Carolina, the two-hour drive became a three-hour drive - to travel only 10 miles in that time span.  The roads were clear at that time in Western North Carolina, but once he got into Tennessee, he was told that a bridge was out.  By now it was 2 a.m. the Saturday morning of his daughter's wedding.  But, David was not to be deterred.  USA Today notes:

The only other way into Johnson City was a bridge in Erwin, Tennessee, which troopers were not letting anyone cross because they were not certain of its stability, Jones said.

Jones decided to get as close to Johnson City as he could so if worst came to worst then he could be FaceTimed into the wedding and walk his daughter down the aisle virtually. To do this, he left behind his Ford Explorer at the exit on Interstate 26 and began traveling on foot toward the bridge that troopers said was washed out.

He had walked about three or four miles when he encountered "washed-out roads" and "debris" - lots of it, apparently.  Yes, he did find out personally that afrore-mentioned bridge was indeed washed out, so he went to Erwin, where the bridge there was, at the time, unmanned by troopers.  Once over the bridge, he did encounter a trooper, who gave him a ride into Erwin, then it was back on foot for eight more miles, then a former co-worker gave him a lift into Johnson City.  After leaving his vehicle, he traveled almost 27 miles.

Before the wedding, David didn't tell his daughter about his adventures, but, as the article relates:

It was not until Jones' reception speech, in which he brought out the red reflector he grabbed during his journey, that his daughter truly understood what he did to make it that day.

"I presented (the reflector) to them and said, 'I want this to be a remembrance for you, and whenever you see it, to remember that you need to protect each other in life, especially in your darkest moments as this reflector did for me. That's when you need it the most,'" Jones recalled.

The USA Today article concluded by saying:

Jones recalled his daughter telling him, "If my father could love me this much, imagine how much our Father in Heaven loves us."

Television station WJHL also reported on David's adventure, and included his comments about encountering a muddy field:

“It just… it’s awful,” Jones explained. “And I can tell you a lot about the mud and the debris fields where I have to climb six, seven-foot-tall piles of debris of old fences and huge trees and it was just a tangled mess and dead-end roads and all kinds of things.”

Although indeed precarious, the trek nearly became deadly at one point when he encountered crews clearing the road with a backhoe. Admittedly, Jones wasn’t expected to be there, so the operator didn’t see him, and he was nearly hit. He became entrapped in the mud.

“I was up to my knees in mud and couldn’t move,” Jones recalls. “And he doesn’t see me. Of course, his cab is facing the other way. Most of the time, he’s swinging this thing around, and I’m ducking. Really, I’m thinking this could be it. There was a lot of prayer at that point.”

Miraculously, Jones says he was able to free himself in time, albeit without one shoe that he had to retrieve afterward, and he continued on his way.

That reflective stake because quite an image of the journey of David Jones; the TV station's website says:

“I brought the reflector to the reception, and I presented it to Elizabeth, my daughter, and Daniel just for them to remember, to be a protector and a good reflection of each other and a reflection of God,” said an emotional Jones.

Jones said he’s no hero, “it’s what any dad would do,” he said.

Elizabeth disagrees and says she’s “just so thankful he made it.”

She added, "I woke up at 4:30 a.m. this morning just wide awake, just spent that whole morning praising God that my dad made it and that my dad’s alive..."

It was impossible for David Jones to know what he would face when he left South Carolina that morning - but there are indications that he is a man of faith, and I believe that God knew and went before him.  As WJHL reported, David has participated in marathons; perhaps that training came in handy in his adventure.  

We make our plans, but we can always keep in mind that He has a bigger one, and we can depend on Him to go before us and guide our steps by His Holy Spirit.  We have to be dependent on the strength of the Lord in order to navigate what we might face, and we can surrender each day to Him, that we might do His will, that we might walk in love, be submissive to the Holy Spirit, pray, and trust God. 

Some days can be, well, more adventurous than others, and that's OK, because we have the ultimate guide who goes with us, who sustains us through our challenges, and as we grow in the Lord, we can experience the preparation that He brings into our lives so that we might honor Him.