I was about 15 years old, brimming with the energy of testosterone in all its broad-spectrum glory, just as my Creator intended. I grew up in the deep country of gently rolling hills of northeastern Oklahoma in an evolving landscape mixed with prairie near a particular high hill that had somehow morphed itself into a true mountain. That rare specimen—a very-high-hill-barely-a-mountain—some five miles distant, sat squarely framed in my bedroom window, crowned by a sparkling red light-studded television tower that blinked on and off at me all night, every night.
Concharty Mountain rises very close to 1,000 feet above the surrounding elevation—so close, in fact, that they bestowed upon it the designation of “mountain” rather than the “world’s tallest hill.” Concharty is the Creek Indian word meaning roughly “marble candy,” because its weathered sandstone features resemble the swirled treat the tribe so loved.
Late one cold early-spring night, I lay wrapped in a much-too-thin blanket, shivering beside my friend Jack inside a frost-covered green canvas tent on the creekbank in the ample woods behind my house. We were plotting a grand adventure—somewhere, anywhere away from the familiar woodlands around home.
The destination was obvious: we would hike to Concharty Mountain, about five miles away, scale its height, and camp out there for the first time. Our plan was simple: trek a straight line across the prairie to the base of the mountain, climb to its crest, and explore the television tower up close. Then we’d scour the land around it to set up our campsite.
Plans of young boy-men are typically just like that. With merely a sentence or two, the entire scheme is etched in stone. All the messy details and what-ifs are lost on the young imagination, soon to be forged in unexpected fires they never even dreamed existed—until real life raises its ugly head. One of those realities is snakes.
There were at least four species of poisonous vipers on that mountain. But we weren’t afraid of the occasional snake, for we had our trusty snakebite kit, complete with tourniquet and a sharp razor for cuts to suck out the poison. It was straight from the Boy Scout Manual. No problem. No worry. That little yellow kit was as good as insurance.
Our entire camping kit was mostly scavenged from the Tulsa Army Navy Marine Surplus store—including all the food we’d need, pilfered from World War II rations. But to ensure sufficient provisions for our persistent hunger, we grabbed one can each of pork and beans—because no camping trip could possibly be official without this requisite staple.
After dreaming and scheming for weeks, the time arrived. Off we went, headed due west across prairies and dry stream beds to the base of the looming Concharty edifice, with its marble-candy weathered slopes thickly forested in blackjack oak, hickory, loblolly pine, and sweetgum.
Most 21st-century parents would never allow their 15-year-old to head off on such an expedition, but parents viewed child-rearing much differently back then. Sink-or-swim was a common philosophy. In my house, Mom left the hard calls to Dad—and Dad was firm about making his son a man by tossing him into the sea of life and letting him learn to swim using his own wits.
In 1966, country phones were black, finger-dialed party-line relics tethered to the wall. Once we crested the nearest hill, we had zero communication back home. Yet, getting lost on a vast prairie with but one solitary mountain in the middle was pretty much impossible. And scattered farms dotted the area, even on Concharty itself.
Jack and I talked about everything under the sun on our hike to the base of Concharty, while liberally swigging from our U.S. Army surplus aluminum canteens on the warm Spring day. In our minds, we had water—we’d checked that box responsibly—so drink away we did. Besides, there would be plenty of flowing streams on the mountain if we ran out… right?
And run out we did. But all the streams were dry. The Spring rains had not yet arrived – although reality did before we set one foot on Concharty’s gentle slopes.
By the time we reached the base of the television tower on Concharty’s flat top, our canteens were bone-dry. The first pangs of thirst crept upon us like a phantom spirit, eclipsing the thrill of adventure.
All my life, I have remembered standing near the base of the tower, desperately thirsty, and spotting a horse’s print in the dirt, filled with a chocolate-colored fluid. From the smell, I knew right away it wasn’t water. So we looked around for a stream but found only a small, nearly dried-up pond of dirty water reeking with the fetid stench of farm animal waste.
On the way up the slopes, we’d spotted a huge hole-in-the-wall cave, so in the late afternoon, we headed back down to make camp there for the night—still hunting for those nonexistent mountain streams that were foundational in our “plans.” All the memories of that adventure are overshadowed by the maddening thirst we couldn’t escape.
Trying to make the best of things and convince each other how brave we were, we built our obligatory cool campfire at the mouth of the cave—our caveman’s TV—around which we shared scary stories. But I was prepared: I had my trusty .45-caliber-modeled Crosman BB pistol. It was so “powerful” you could actually watch the BB arc lazily to the ground after its pitiful 10-yard flight. Yet in my teenage mind, I was utterly swayed by confidence in that black metal instrument of death. I dared any bear to come into our cave and give it his best shot at the strong and self-assured humans.
Thank You, Lord, for sparing us that lesson in reality!
Finally, close to midnight, we began discussing a hike back home in the dark. The thirst had grown physically painful, driving us to the edge of madness. So, as a final desperate remedy, I suggested we crack open our pork and beans and drink the juice.
We did.
Of course, it was awful—like seawater—and only made our thirst worse.
Wisely, we were more afraid of hiking in the dark than of that intense, overwhelming torment. So, at first light, we broke camp and trekked home to a cold glass of ice water. In our teenage minds, that pure, iced elixir instantly erased any suffering we’d endured, and the adventure was a praiseworthy triumph of bravado and skill. Even as we drank, we began planning the next trip back to the cave on Concharty Mountain.
But a subsequent trek across the prairie and up the marble-candy slopes never materialized. School, girls, dates, bitterly cold winters, and finally the university interposed themselves, ushering in an all-new reality called “mature adulthood” – an unavoidable state of final development I would recommend to no one.
But I’ve never forgotten the most important lesson of that expedition: thirst is maddening.
I have also discovered that there is a thirst that drives everyone mad—young men, old men, boys, girls, and women alike. It is, in fact, the seminal, deepest craving of our existence — the thirst for which we were created — one that is only quenched from the Well of Living Water.
Jesus told the Samaritan woman at the well about the Water that eternally relieves our most desperate craving: “If you knew the gift of God, and Who it is Who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living Water… Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the Water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the Water that I will give him will become in him a well of Water springing up to eternal life.” (John 4:10, 13–14)
As Templars, we are the Great Kingdom’s guardians of that Well of Eternal Life. We have sworn a sacred oath to protect the rights of all who wish to come to Jesus and drink their fill in and near the land where our Savior walked. Today, our quest is as impossible as it has ever been in history. So many need to drink, yet so many impediments are continuously mounted between them and the sacred Well.
And here we are, separated from that challenge by thousands of miles and a world full of legal and physical barriers. Day by day, to my Templar mind and heart, it all seems utterly insurmountable.
Because it is.
And that is exactly where God has placed us—between a rock and a totally impossible hard place. Christ spoke to this very position that His own disciples would discover for themselves:
“When the disciples heard this, they were very astonished and said, ‘Then who can be saved?’ And looking at them, Jesus said to them, ‘With people this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.’” (Matthew 19:25–26)
In this passage, Jesus’ disciples were in the exact same bind that we Templars find ourselves in today. And Jesus speaks across time to us, just as He did to them. The message we must hear and live by is this:
God is the Lord of the impossible.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, God never opens doors so that we may walk through them. According to the Psalmist, He is the God Who does not open doors…
…instead, He shatters the gates of bronze and cuts the bars of iron asunder.
“They were hungry and thirsty;
Their soul fainted within them…
Let them give thanks to the Lord for His lovingkindness,
And for His wonders to the sons of men!
For He has satisfied the thirsty soul,
And the hungry soul He has filled with what is good…
Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble;
He saved them out of their distresses.
He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death
And broke their bands apart.
Let them give thanks to the Lord for His lovingkindness,
And for His wonders to the sons of men!
For He has shattered gates of bronze
And cut bars of iron asunder.” (Psalm 107: 5,8-9,13-16)
Beloved Templar, are you discouraged by your impossible undertaking? Don’t be! God would never entrust us with anything less than an impossible task. Otherwise, we and all who observe us might think we were performing the miracles.
But it is God Who shatters the gates of bronze; it is He Who cuts the bars of iron asunder! By His immeasurable and unfathomable grace, we are given the unparalleled privilege of watching—and even participating in—the miracles He generates before our eyes each day.