There's Something Out There!
All photos for this blog were taken at LaSalle Recreation Area, north of Itasca State Park in Minnesota.
Want to know a truth that will make your life better? This truth will improve your health. Most people choose to ignore this truth. They miss out on the good things life has to offer. These things are completely free.
What is the truth that improves body, mind and soul and costs nothing?
It’s time spent outside.
Time outside improves body, mind, and soul AND…costs nothing. That is why I say…there’s something out there. But the phrase there’s something out there did not originate with me. These words came from the lips of a precious granddaughter. She was three. She first said the words on a spring morning by a small campfire while she sat in my lap.
“Grandpa,” she said, “there’s something down there.” She was looking into a coulee of the Missouri River…a drainage which eventually runs water into the Missouri. I was doing the usual adult thing-not paying attention to what she said. And, without her 3-year-old persistence, I never would have heard the great truth she was speaking. It took repetition of her truth. She said the same thing at least three times.
Finally, I understood she was serious. At last, I knew this was a momentous occasion. While there were only 2 of us at the little campfire. It WAS momentous. She was telling me the truth I want you to know. She used the words “there’s something down there.” I have modified them slightly for public use: “There’s something out there.”
When I finally realized she wanted to walk down into the coulee our adventure began. Both of us were silent and still, listening to wind in leaves and bird song. We enjoyed the fresh green of spring, and the refreshment spring air gives when it fills our lungs. She was not satisfied until I carried her to the very bottom of the coulee. There we sat on a stump, watched, and listened. She was three years old at the time. A three-year-old does not sit still long. She did. That’s because “there’s something out there.”
There is something out there. It is for three-year-old girls…and boys. It is for every human-even future president. Out 26th president, Theodore Roosevelt was restored of the grief caused by the death of his wife and mother on the same day. What restored him?
Time outside.
Roosevelt went to the North Dakota badlands to cope with his grief when the two women most important in his life died. Can you imagine his sorrow? Roosevelt was also a weak sickly man who suffered from sever asthma since childhood. You know the story as well as I.
Roosevelt could tell you, “There’s something out there.” He would say it forcefully with gusto. He would say it with sincere firm conviction. Years later, standing on the back of a train car in Medora, North Dakota-in the badlands…Roosevelt said these words to the man next to him:
"I never would have been President if it had not been for my experiences in North Dakota."
-Theodore Roosevelt
The time Roosevelt spent in the badlands of North Dakota gave him vigorous health. Time spent riding horse, hunting, sleeping on the ground restored the soul of a man broken in grief.
I’ll say it again…
There’s something out there.
Don’t believe for a moment “something out there’ is only for three-year-olds or men would would become president.
There is something out there for everyone.
You.
Me.
Leave the screen. Leave the electricity, leave the year around comfort of your home.
Go outside.
Why?
There IS something out there!
Now you may wonder, how did “something” get outside?
This is my answer.
God has put HIS power and love in everything outside.
God is present outside.
Try it.
Go outside. Be still and watch. Let the power and love of God surround you.
