LIFE IN OPPOSITION
When I was young, we used to go camping up at the Lodgepole Campground in Sequoia National Park. I think it was the campground at the highest altitude, and we liked it because it wasn’t always as crowded as the lower campgrounds. Now, I always thought the campground was named after some Native American tent pole. It was much later that I discovered it was named after a type of pine tree.
Now, the lodgepole pine is specifically created by God for opposition. Its pine cones are not easy to break to let animals and birds gather the seeds as with some of the other pine cones. Do you know when its seeds come out? They come out under extreme heat. My cousin Don and I used to love to sneak pine cones into the fire so they would pop and make people jump.
But notice the real significance here. Lodgepole pines are designed by God, the intelligent designer, to reseed the forest after a fire. The seeds are dormant until they are needed after a crisis. The OPPOSITION of the extreme heat brings about the release of the life-giving seeds so that the reforesting can begin.