Rooms - James L. Rubart [117]
The King of the universe is inside of you. You are in Him. As it says in the epistle to the Romans, if God is for you, who can be against you? Put on the full armor of a saint of God and swing the sword of the Spirit with all your might.
I am proud of you, Micah. Fight the good fight, and may the Spirit of the living God protect you on the right and on the left, as you come and as you go.
Courage,
Archie
P.S. If you have been counting, you must realize that at this point in our journey together, only two letters remain for you to read. Instead of waiting two more weeks to finish them, please open the next one the day after tomorrow and the last one four days after that. I will see you then.
Micah set down the letter. Was Rick the villain? C’mon. Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling it was the mechanic.
And he had to fight? He shook his head and stared at the ocean. So much thunderous power in the waves, yet untapped. So much power in the Lord, yet untapped. But it didn’t give him any hope. He didn’t know how to fight this kind of battle.
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Micah woke at 5:30 the next morning and headed for Cape Lookout, a headland fifty miles south of Cannon Beach. There he would rip the emotions from his heart and lay them all out. He’d wrestle with the question of what to do with his life, away from the house, away from the voice, away from Rick—away from everything.
He’d heard the cape was spectacular. It jutted a mile and a half straight out into the ocean, five hundred feet above the waves. Apparently it gave dazzling views. Miles to the north, impressive Tillamook Head was visible. Looking south, the sand dunes of Cape Kiwanda could be seen on cloudless days. The Internet said massive spruce and hemlock trees hovered above an emerald green understory of salal, sword ferns, and salmonberry bushes.
He pulled into the parking lot a bit past 6:45. Not surprisingly his was the only car, and his shoulders relaxed. He didn’t want to meet anyone on the trail, and an early start would give him a sizable chunk of time alone, even if others started the hike after him.
A light mist drifted down on his windshield as he stepped out of his car and grabbed his day pack. When he reached the trailhead thirty seconds later, the rain came down in sheets. Micah smiled. Excellent. It would probably stop others from making the hike.
Fifty yards down the trail, the tree cover blocked out most of the rain, and his Mariners baseball hat handled the rest. The trail morphed from hard pack into black mud in spots but overall it was firm, and he clipped along at a fast pace.
He didn’t know why getting to the end of the cape in rapid fashion held such importance. But it did. So he plowed into the two-and-a-half-mile hike and only stopped once, to look at a memorial plaque commemorating the crew of a B-17 plane that crashed into the cape in 1943.
Three-quarters of the way into his trek, the clouds parted and the sun broke through with such strength Micah took off both his jacket and his sweatshirt. The sun shone through the raindrops hanging off the leaves, creating diamonds everywhere he looked. The steam rising off the fallen logs looked like tendrils of smoke and made it seem as if an unseen fire burned somewhere on the forest floor.
The beauty on the outside softened the turmoil inside, if only slightly.
Finally the thick Sitka spruce parted, and he stood five hundred feet above the Pacific Ocean. The coastline from where he’d come still sat in a shroud of fog right up to where the surf and the beach met.
It was as if Cape Lookout were singled out to receive the sun’s blessing while the rest of the coast was regulated to sit in the grayness of an encompassing cloud. It should have been a perfect setting to figure out where his life would go from here. But it wasn’t, because unbelievably, someone crashed down the trail behind him.
He didn’t expect to know them, let alone know them well.
Rick.
Loathing swept through Micah, and a thought slammed