Giddy Up

Giddy UpPhoto Credit 

In September, my husband and I traveled to Alaska for two weeks.  We ventured off our cruise ship quite a few times to take guided tours at ports of call.   I loved learning about salmon reproduction, native history, and the habits of hump back whales.   What can I say? I am a nerdy girl who likes to learn the “how and why” of things.  Our best tour guide was a young guy who drove us up into the Yukon Territory and regaled us with stories about The Gold Rush.

Our Yukon bus tour took us up a steep mountain from Skagway into Canada.  We learned that prospectors traveled this same route on horseback.  Because the trip was so arduous and long, the miners were required to pack a year’s worth of supplies to make sure that they would not starve along the way.  It is estimated that ten thousand gold-hungry men attempted to cross the rocky terrain.  Three thousand horses died on the trail, and only half of the explorers reached the Yukon. Those miners who survived the trip then explored the rivers and staked their claims.  Men would dig in the frozen dirt for gold dust, and then separate the treasure from the gravel.

I marveled at the hysteria that drove these men to risk it all for hidden treasure.  Crazy people, I thought.

Tonight, I was reading in Proverbs 2, and God prompted me to see those greedy prospectors in a different light:

Tune your ears to the world of Wisdom;
set your heart on a life of Understanding.
That’s right—if you make Insight your priority,
and won’t take no for an answer,
Searching for it like a prospector panning for gold,
like an adventurer on a treasure hunt,
Believe me, before you know it Fear-of-God will be yours;
you’ll have come upon the Knowledge of God.

Lord, give me an adventurous, wild heart that saddles up and seeks Your treasure.

Giddy up, girl.  Get greedy for Him and stake your claim.

Something to think about…

35 Comments

  1. Lyli,
    how fun…I’m with you; I find it interesting to know the “how and why” when I travel some place new…i have heard Alaska is beautiful…one of these days…and yes, being greedy for God is the best kind of greed because God always gives us more of Himself when we seek Him 🙂

    1. Dolly, it was on my bucket list… you must go. So amazingly beautiful! I’ve never thought about greed as being a good thing, but last night, when I read that passage in The Message, I got an immediate picture of how God rewards a heart that pursues Him with equal passion.

  2. Lyli, you have shared great thoughts here. I read this earlier but came back now to read it & link up. Here is what hit me….you keep at it & keep at it much like those prospectors. And before you know it, you come upon it! Yet each day is a part, a piece of the whole journey. And you went on our dream vacation 🙂 Loved reading this today! Blessings!

  3. Lyli, I can’t wait to make it to Alaska. I could learn about and watch animals for hours. Love that saddle photo by the way. My goal in life is to seek His Kingdom first, and to never stop learning about this wonderful world He has created for us. Blessings, friend.

    1. Kim, we have the “Over Alaska” DVD… I think that’s what started us on this journey…. we wanted to see it live and in person. 🙂

      The saddle picture is a stock photo… couldn’t find a picture of a miner that worked, but then I remembered the phrase “giddy up,” and this post came into shape.

  4. I remember reading novels about men who headed west and north for the Gold Rush. So cold, so scary. I guess we’re all motivated to push past things when we think the goal is worth it. I want an adventurous, wild heart like that too–I need to keep my heart set on the worthy prize! Thanks for sharing this analogy, Lyli. It’s a great one!

    1. When I was teaching high school, I used to teach a Jack London story called “To Build a Fire” that was set in the Yukon — the main character freezes to death at the end (not exactly a happy story to teach.) I thought of it quite a bit on this tour. — And, the tour guide actually quoted an entire Robert Service poem about greedt miners to end our tour (I wanted to stand up and cheer!).

      I just got to thinking about what my heart pursues with this kind of intensity — I seem to be able to “go crazy” as I cheer for the Miami Heat, so why can’t I evoke that same type of energy for my Bible study time.

    1. I love to travel, too! I think about how the disciples were always traveling and going on adventures … when I was a kid, I had a Barbie camper, and I always dreamed of having a real one and just taking off…. maybe one day. 🙂

  5. I’m not a cruise person, but we’ve considered taking an Alaskan cruise. It is definitely a beautiful place. Great analogy concerning digging for treasures.

  6. Great connection your mind made there. Makes me think also of the Parable of the man who sold everything to buy the field containing a buried treasure—and a quote from an old book, by Elizabeth Goudge, about how you weren’t wasting your life if you had bought the field and, digging and digging, hadn’t yet come up with the treasure, because you’d made all that much progress in knowing where it did lie (the part you hadn’t gotten to yet).

    I like Robert Service poems about the Gold Rush, too, because my father used to enjoy and read them aloud.

    1. Sylvia, thanks for reminding me about that Parable. I am going to read that one over tonight.

      The poem he shared as a new one to me called “The Spell of the Yukon,” but one of my favorite Service poems is “The Cremation of Sam McGee.”

  7. Oh ya, that’s it…isn’t it! Finding a treasure, so great, so priceless, so worth seeking out and digging it up that we would risk our lives for it! God has been speaking to me about “sacrifice” lately and how the greatest things of life all require sacrifice. And more and more I am seeing that in the gospels too lately! I want that kind of faith sister! A faith to search for Him with an “all is loss, only He is gain” type of thinking! Blessings, Jen

  8. Great post, Lyli. My husband and I love all things western – and stories about the old mining days fascinate us. He just finished watching the Klondike series on TV. We have taken Jeep rides into barren and treacherous country – and seen the remnants of people who literally staked their lives on finding gold. Earthly treasure, yes, and so their *hunt* was in some ways pointless.

    But, you have made such a good lesson out of that. For the Lord does indeed tell us to seek His Gold like a miner. Single-mindedly, enduring hardships and discouragement perhaps, but always with the goal of finding HIS treasures!

    GOD BLESS!

  9. I am so jealous you went to Alaska! My husband and I want to go there on a missions trip at some point. It is such an amazingly beautiful state. I wanna go when they have 24 hours of daylight as I think that would be so crazy! Thanks for stopping by to say hi 🙂

  10. I love the way God spoke to your through these verses. While reading your post, I was thinking how desperate those men must have been to risk it all for gold. Just about as desperate as I am for God, I suppose. Sounds like you, too.

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