Perhaps the most famous forest ranger ever was Carl Sharsmith, Dr. Carl Sharsmith of Yosemite National Park. One account reads like this:
“For more than 60 summers beginning in 1931, Dr. Sharsmith fired the intellects, touched the emotions, sparked the imaginations and inspired the lives of untold thousands of Yosemite visitors. His podium for most of those years was Tuolumne Meadows, the centerpiece of Yosemite’s high country. He was the first ranger-naturalist at the Meadows and worked alone in that capacity until 1946. . .
“He was an interpretive ranger, and led visitor walks and hikes and presented campfire programs that personally connected visitors. . . with the . . . special-ness of Yosemite. For those people, Carl. . . was an icon, and a visit to Yosemite was incomplete without a personal contact with him. His reputation never stopped growing, and his programs were ‘musts.’ For countless Yosemite fans. . . he was the ‘Yosemite experience.’” http://www.name4carl.org/n4cbio.htm
National Geographic told this story about him when he was still working at age 81. . . “Carl was back at his tent quarters after a long afternoon with tourists. His nose was flaked white and red with sunburn; his eyes were watery, partly from age but also from hearing again an old question after a half century of summers in California’s Yosemite National Park. A lady tourist had hit him with a question where it hurt:
“I’ve only got an hour to spend at Yosemite.” she declared. “What should I do? Where should I go?” The old naturalist-interpreter ranger finally found voice to reply. “Lady, only an hour?” He repeated it slowly. “I suppose that if I had only an hour to spend at Yosemite, I’d just walk over there by the river and sit down and cry.”
Hmmmm. If that is the case with God’s Creation, how much more does it apply to spending time with God Himself? When we shuffle Jesus off to the margins of our lives because of our busyness, we are a lot like that impatient tourist, and maybe we shouldn’t be surprised we know Him no better than we do.
It makes me rethink the amount of time I’ve budgeted to spend with the Lord today. How about you?
“Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked,
or stand in the way of sinners,
or sit in the seat of mockers.
But his delight is in the law of the Lord,
and on his law he meditates day and night.
Psalm 1:1,2