it’s idealic. Open fields. Rolling foothills. Mountians in the backdrop. It’s part of the George Washington National Forest in the part of the Commonwealth of Virginia just shy of the West Virginia border.
With a few hours to kill before I led a wedding at the Gristmill Inn in Warm Springs, part of Bath County, VA, I went and mounted my faithful stead (the Voodoo Blue FJ Cruiser) and took the back roads. I left the state maintained roads, crossed several one lane bridges over flowing streams, avoided the deer in the middle of the road, watched the red tail hawks, and just set in the shade of trees on the edge of the fields … and read.
I came across a bed and breakfast. This place was out there … a few miles off the paved road … on public land (inside the National Forest) but had a no entrance except on invitation. Well … that piqued my interest that made me put my foot (or at least the wheel) over the line.
This place, this old building has a pop culture connection. Sitting in disarray, it was noticed by the producers/director of the film Sommersby. This post Civil War dramatic love story starred Jodie Foster, Richard Gere, James Earl Jones, Bill Pullman and more. In the Civil War’s Reconstruction era, a presumed dead farmer returns home six years after the war. The wife begins to suspect he is an imposter. Her new love interest presses on this and a great act of sacrifice of loved. (NOTE: Red print has SPOILERS)
From Wiki …John “Jack” Sommersby left his farm to fight in the American Civil War and is presumed dead after six years. Despite the hardship of working their farm in Vine Hill, Tennessee, his apparent widow Laurel is content in his absence, because Jack was an unpleasant and abusive husband. She makes remarriage plans with one of her neighbors, Orin Meacham, who has been helping her and her young son with the farm work.
One day, Jack seemingly returns with a change of heart. He is now kind and loving to Laurel and their young son, Rob. In the evenings, he reads to them from Homer‘s Iliad, which the old Jack would never have done. He claims that the book was given to him by a man he met in prison. Jack and Laurel rekindle their intimacy, which leads to Laurel becoming pregnant.
He is later arrested for murder, but it was the original husband who committed the crime. He could get off, but this would have major repercussions for the new child and the wife. He willingly lays down his life, he keeps the her and the child safe, and his promises to those working the farm.
The story is an adult love story, not because of intimacy, but the mature decisions that love demands … struggles, selflessness, and sacrifice … even sacrifice unto death.
So … one person gave himself up to save others. No great love has a man that he lay down his life for another.
Do you get it? Do you see the connection to God’s love … he willingly laid down his life. He willingly paid the price.
For you. For me.
But we have a better story than Sommersby. For the one who laid his life down for us, also took it up again. He rose from the dead. He gives us hope. A hope that is certain.
We see pictures of God’s love in many places. Me? I saw it on a dirt road, a B&B, a movie set, a National Forest – all in the same place. All pointing to Jesus.
And until he returns for me or calls me home, I still see His love here.
I hope you do too.
Meanwhile, I have a place to take my wife.
Muddy Shoes by Todd 
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