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Another Big Feed but Different...Matthew 15:29-39...Another big Monday hike for me

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  The goal was to make it all the way up the East Inlet trail to complete the whole trail system.  I would start at 8300 ft where the East Inlet dumps into Grand Lake to 10 miles up to where it feeds 5th Lake at 10,900 ft.  I would start at 6 am and get back to the van at 4:15 pm.  6 lakes in total that would be involved in this trek, Grand, Lone Pine, Verna, Spirit, 4th, and 5th.  The trip included seeing many deer and fish and also an unexpected visitor at the final destination.  You would expect not to see anyone this deep up a trail but after about 30 minutes of alone time at 5th Lake, another hiker came over the rise to the edge of the lake.  Solitude is great but sharing the event with another has great value too.  It proved again that we live in a small world as we connected with someone we both knew. The passage this Sunday magnified the point that it is not what is external that defiles you but what is internal.  It is not the unwash...
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How Great Is Your Faith...What does great faith look like...Matthew 15:21-28

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  Do I have faith to make it back to Poudre Lake 9 miles " up " the trail?  The only consolation is I will be walking over very familiar trail and I made some mental notes of trail markers to be accomplishments on the way back.  A campsite sign, a large log along the trail and such help me to know my position and points of possible rest.  Here is an example of one. Our passage is so good because Jesus points out to His disciples someone who has "great faith."  He has done this before pointing to the centurion in chapter 8.   He will do this again when He points to the widow who puts into the offering her last two mites.  Jesus is giving His disciples people to look at who have what they don't at the time.  Jesus keeps reminding them that they have " little faith ."  They have faith but it is not as full as the faith of these.   It makes us evaluate our own faith.  Would Jesus say we have "little faith" or would He say that we have ...
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The Big Problem...Matthew 15:1-20...A sternly corrective Jesus

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  Sometimes we say, "The camera cannot do justice to what I am seeing."  The photo above is a representation of that statement.  I am on the saddle above Timber Lake to peek over on the other side to see Julian Lake and Longs Peak in the background.  Although I am very thankful to be able to take this picture and save it for future viewing, what I captured in my eyes with all the depths of color and perspective cannot be matched.  I had to be there, in that spot, to appreciate the full extent of what I was experiencing.   This is true of Jesus also.  When we rely on just others perspectives of Him, we will come up short to our time with Him.  When we rely on sound bytes and summaries of Jesus' life and not walk through personally the line by line of words and deeds, we will come up short of experiencing His full character.  Jesus gets painted in many different ways and we tend to lean to one painting of His life over another but to get t...
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