just by a brick...

This is what happens when you go camping instead of general conference (what we should have been doing yesterday):

 You won't understand the title of this post until I tell you the rest of the story... 

So here's the story - we decided to go camping on Friday night and then meet up with my brother and his family on Saturday morning.  Mike had a triathlon this weekend not too far from us, so we thought it would be great to get together.  We knew it was conference weekend, when we should have been listening to spiritual counsel from church leaders, but decided that we'd visit family instead.  (So this is all really Mike's fault for doing his triathlon this weekend...  :) )  Anyway, we got up Saturday morning, packed up and headed in to do a short hike before meeting up with Mike and Carrie.  We had packed up our tent and things as fast as we could because the flies were terrible.  We didn't even eat breakfast because the flies were so bad.  We decided to head down to another area to eat without the pesky flies.  We found a nice lookout area and got out to enjoy our cinnamon rolls.  But, we had also just heard the van making some weird noises and when we got out, we discovered the flat tire.  Okay, a little annoying, but we had a spare tire.  So Alex unloaded the stuff in the back to get out the jack and got the spare tire.  A car drove by and they asked if we needed help.  At this point, we were pretty confident, so we told them we were okay.  Off they went.  So Alex proceeded to work on changing the tire.  We were on a little bit of an incline, but Alex thought that would work to his advantage.  But, the jack wasn't tall enough.  Great.  So now we thought maybe the van should be more level.  So, he turned the van around, moved it to a little more level area, and started over.  Just as it was looking like the jack would work, another person drove by and asked if we needed help.  Again, we waved them off.  We nearly had it.  And then just nearly didn't have it.  The jack wasn't tall enough.  Now what?  We were on a fairly secluded road and just sent away the people who did drive by.  We had a phone, but knew it would take forever for someone to get there to help.  And then we saw the brick and had a stroke of inspiration. 

  

It was just barely enough to make it possible to change the tire.  Nearly 2 hours later, we were on the road again... only with the help of the merciful brick.  I couldn't help but think the flat tire was punishment for our choice to go hiking instead of conference.  But I also couldn't help but think that finding the brick there was a tender mercy from the Lord.  And then I couldn't help making a spiritual analogy out of our experience.  I was thinking about how we are like the jack (and the flat tire is like sin).  Sometimes we do the best we can, but just can't quite measure up.  No matter how much we try, we still fall short in our efforts.  And that's where the brick comes in - the Atonement of Christ is like the brick.  Without Christ's atoning sacrifice, we would not even be able to repent and would be stuck in our progression (you can't go very far with a flat tire). We can't even begin to change (repentance) our flat tire until we have the power of the Atonement in our lives.  We still have to do the best we can and then Lord makes up the difference where we fall short. And, we also sometimes turn away the people who might be able to help us. 

Anyway, I was also grateful that we pulled off in a nice lookout spot

  and we had camping chairs to sit in and Oreos to keep the boys entertained.  

 

 (Oh, I also should mention that we should be thankful for those pesky flies in our camp area, because if it hadn't been for them, we would have eaten our breakfast at our campsite and been on our way.  We wouldn't have pulled off where we discovered the flat tire - and who knows exactly where or how we would have realized that flat.  )