Dave Myers

It’s truly amazing how quickly summer can slip away.

A few weeks ago, it occurred to me that we were in the middle of July already, and August was coming quickly. For me, as an outdoorsman, the internal alert went off to start thinking about getting my food plots done for this fall’s deer season. My goal most years is to try to have the plots worked up and completed by August 1st, so that the crops have enough time to grow.

This year though, that internal alarm that was going off was a bit more intense than normal because of the ice storm we had back in March. The property that I lease is over in the Hillman area, and it got hit incredibly hard with the ice storm. By my best estimate, 50 percent of the treetops got snapped off, and the number of trees that are bent over in half is just astounding.

So, normally, the middle of July would already provoke my motivation to work at the property and get my blood flowing, but this year, there definitely has been an increased sense of urgency, because not only do I have my normal work of mowing down the weeds, discing up the soil, and planting the crops, I have to clear all the trails and shooting lanes of the debris before I can even start thinking about working up the soil.

Words that I have used to describe the condition the property is in are: jungle, disaster, or wreck. The forest is just littered with snapped off limbs and branches. The trails I normally drive or walk on have been completely obliterated.

But with this in my mind, I started cutting my trails and lanes back open. I’ve enlisted some help from my son-in-law, and we have just poured hours into the property to simply make the property navigable. There’s just so much there to do that we’ve just had to prioritize what matters the most.

Did I mention that July was really hot, too?

As I write this today, we’ve made good progress and probably have cleaned up 2⁄3 of the

trails and shooting lanes. We still have more to go, but I’m not sure if we’ll get everything done for this year or not.

At points, our restoration project just seemed overwhelming.

In the midst of this project, it hit me how far God will go to restore a right relationship with us. You see, each of us since Adam and Eve have had to carry the burden of sin with us, but the

problem is that none of us has the ability to overcome it. We can work hard, dedicate ourselves to becoming a better person, and invest into all sorts of training to better understand how to navigate problems we’ll encounter in this life.

But, by ourselves, we will never be able to overcome our sins, and we will never overcome death, which is the end result of sin.

God cared so much for our brokenness that he provided a way for us to reconcile to him, even though none of us are deserving of it.

Remember those words I used to describe the property after this past storm? Jungle… disaster… wreck?

These are words that can describe each of us at points. Some may try to cover it up or hide it better than others, but sin causes us to not be able to be our best selves — no matter how hard we try.

The first step in a restoration project is to simply recognize that there is a problem in the first place… something just isn’t quite right.

But this is where God steps in. He knows that we have a problem that we can’t overcome, so he has provided a way for us to get there by his grace through Jesus Christ.

God simply asks us to acknowledge that we are broken and need a savior to clean up the mess and quagmire that we’ve created. God sent Jesus to overcome sin and death on our behalf. If we confess with our mouths that Jesus is Lord and has risen from the dead on our behalf, we can be saved from the disasters or wrecks we’ve created.

By doing so, God brings us into a right relationship with him whereby we can live freely under the forgiveness that he alone provides.

And how much does God desire this right relationship? The Bible tells us that if just one out of a hundred of us strayed away, he’d still pursue just that one to bring them back into his safety.

My restoration project in the woods is an ongoing process that will still take hours upon on hours to get right, but God, well — he can restore a person’s soul in the blink of an eye. All you have to do is ask him to.

“If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” — Romans 10:9

Dave Myers is a retired English teacher and baseball coach from Alpena Public Schools and is the author of the books, “Swim Upstream” and “Breaking Camp.”