Doug Van Pelt

Big Foot Is Real

While driving through Austin the other day, I came upon one of those "Bigfoot trucks." I had my camera with me, so I took some pictures. Here is one as I approached it.

In 2 Kings 6, we can read about the amazing floating axehead. Some of Elisha's men were building places to live. While chopping down trees, an iron axhead fell into the water. "'Oh my lord,' he cried out, 'it was borrowed!'" It is so funny to hear such an everyday and normal concern being voiced. The Scriptures aren't all live-map instructions or lofty God-talk. Sometimes we see snapshots of normal people. There's even a street address (Straight Street) given in the book of Acts. If the Bible were just a sacred text that man made up, surely they would have left out "secular" or unnecessary details such as this stuff. Anyway, Elisha hears this man's dilemma and moves to help him. He cut a stick and threw it where the axhead had sunk, and all of a sudden the iron starts floating, and the man was able to retrieve it. That's an amazing story; but the chapter gets even better as Elisha gets surrounded by Aram's army. One of Elisha's servants is freaking out, "'Oh, my lord, what shall we do?'" Elisha answers, "'Don't be afraid...Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.' And Elisha prayed, 'Oh Lord, open his eyes so he may see.' Then the Lord opened the servant's eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha." Elisha asked God to blind these men, which He did, and he took them to Samaria, where he asked God to open their eyes, which He did, and they all saw where they were and the king of Israel saw them, as well. The question was asked if they should be slaughtered, and Elijah said not to, but to feed them. A great feast was prepared and then they went back to Aram and stopped raiding Israel's territory. I wish we could find a way to win our enemies over without bloodshed today. Perhaps we shall see some great things like this in our lifetime.

There are only 32 days, 3 hours, twenty nine minutes and 19 seconds left until the next deadline. Between now and then I need to write about 7 stories, edit, proofread, and format the stories of other writers, and lay out the next issue. As I Lay Dying is our cover story. I hope you all are reading the Norma Jean interview in our "Internet Exclusives" section. It was a great interview that really shows that this buzz-band has their head on straight. I hope to finish transcribing the Mark Salomon interview I did recently to get some background on the Crucified history piece we ran in our March/April issue. Oh, over the weekend, Lary Dean of Trytan came by and removed his trailer (of motocross gear that he'd been keeping in our driveway) and our Ad Sales Director, Heather Reynolds, and her family moved into the office. It's a five-bedroom 1800 square foot home that's not being used to its fullest potential (a master bedroom suite and one entire office room were empty), and David and Heather recently sold their home and are awaiting the new one to be built, so they're staying here for about a month. It was strange to open the door this morning and see all the evidence of someone living here (a full refrigerator, etc), and it was nice to have the heater already on and the place nice and warm. Usually Heather works out of her home, but now I'll be able to hear her use her Jedi mind tricks on advertising clients to make each sale.
:?)