In the middle of the night there were three loud noises! They sounded like small explosions! Joe and Haley were instantly awake, and Haley screamed as if she had seen a mouse eating tomato soup! Joe quickly got his crutches and went to Haley’s room to try to calm her down.
Haley asked, “What were those three noises? They scared me!” Joe looked very angry, and he said, “They were gunshots! Someone is shooting in Medford Forest!” Joe was the caretaker of the forest, and sometimes he had to investigate things like this. Joe was angry because it was probably someone shooting at some animals!
The next morning Joe told Haley that he had to take the 4-wheeler into the forest and see if he could find out what was going on in the forest during the night. Joe told Haley to stay out of the forest, it could be dangerous! After breakfast Joe strapped his crutches onto the 4-wheeler and he drove down the trail into the forest.
Haley could not sit still! She wanted to know what had happened last night, so she decided to follow Joe carefully. She and her pet raccoon Daniel ran out of the house and followed the trail to the forest. Fortunately, it had rained recently, and the 4-wheeler had left tracks in the muddy ground. It was easy to follow the 4-wheeler.
They went deep into the forest and there was a steep hill in front of them. The 4-wheeler had gone up that hill, and Haley could hear people talking on the other side of the hill. One of the voices was Joe’s voice, but she did not recognize the other voice. Haley and Daniel crept quietly up the hill. Haley was on her hands and knees, and she was trying not to make any noise at all. She felt that she had to get to the top of the hill so that she could see who Joe was talking to.
Haley was almost to the top of the hill when she accidentally put her left knee onto a bunch of acorns! The acorns rolled and Haley started to slide backwards down the hill! Haley wanted to scream, but she knew that she could not make any noise, so she quietly said, “Daniel, do something!”
Daniel did something! He saw that Haley was sliding backwards down the steep hill. Daniel immediately jumped onto Haley’s back to catch a ride down the hill; it should be a lot of fun! Haley could not see where she was going, but Daniel was facing the right way so that he could see where they were going. Haley could not see the tangle of raspberry bushes at the bottom of the hill, but Daniel could see them. Daniel jumped off Haley just before they crashed into the raspberry bushes.
Haley was tangled up in the raspberry bushes, the thorns were scratching her skin, and the raspberry juice was staining her skin! While she was trying to untangle herself from the bushes, Daniel was happily eating raspberries as fast as he could!
Haley was a mess! She did not want to spy on Joe anymore; she just walked slowly back to the farmhouse.
That night Joe told Haley what had happened in the forest. He said that some people had come into the forest at night and had shot a deer. A trail camera had gotten a good picture of the two people who had been there, and the sheriff would be looking for them. Haley asked, “Is the deer going to be ok?” Joe told her that the deer was dead.
Just then the sheriff drove up to the farmhouse and Joe told Haley that the sheriff had a surprise for her. The sheriff opened the back seat of his car and helped a young fawn to get out of the car! Joe told Haley that the deer had been a mother, and that her baby needed someone to take care of it until it was big enough to live on its own.
Haley was excited! She was going to raise a fawn! She looked at it and said, “I am going to name you Frank, that name seems to fit you.” Joe told Haley that the fawn was a girl, not a boy. Haley said, “I still think that the name Frank fits the fawn, so that will be her name!”
Haley was super excited, but she was also very sad because Frank’s mother had been killed. Later that evening she asked Joe why bad things like this had to happen. Joe explained to Haley that bad things like death are the result of sin in this world. Originally God had made this world perfect. There was no evil, no sin, and no death. If Adam and Eve had not disobeyed God, they would still be alive and healthy today. No one would have ever been sick or died. There would be no sin, and no one would do evil things like killing Frank’s mother.
In the Bible in Romans 8:18-25 it says:
Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory He will reveal to us later. For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who His children really are. Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse. But with eager hope, the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as His adopted children, including the new bodies He has promised us. We were given this hope when we were saved.
Joe told Haley that every human is born into this world spiritually dead, and from the moment we are born we begin to die physically. This is not the way God intended for humans to be. All this death started when Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate the forbidden fruit. Only by asking Jesus into our life can we break the hold that death has on us.
When we accept Jesus, we become alive spiritually. We will still die physically, but those that have Jesus in their life are promised a new body that will be like the bodies Adam and Eve originally had. These new bodies will not grow old, get tired, or die. Our new bodies will live forever! Each person must choose between living the life of death or turning to Jesus and starting the life of true life! Only by accepting Jesus can the true life begin!