The Gold's Up Higher


Psalms 119:127 KJV

Therefore I love thy commandments above gold; yea, above fine gold.

Our recent family vacation was spent in Winthrop, WA and the Methow Valley, the heart of Washington gold country. Even now hobbyists and more serious prospectors are bringing gold out of "them thar hills!"

Thanks to Bohannan, my oldest son, we got a small taste of gold prospecting while we were there. Placer gold is that which is scattered down a river stream by the current of the water. It's recovered either by panning or dredging the gold river's bottom and running it through a sluice to sift out the gold from other sediment.

Here's the applicable part for us; since the gold is scattered down the river through the current it stands to reason that the farther you get from the source, the smaller will be the pieces of gold. There are huge amounts of gold all the way down to the ocean, but it's so fine it is almost impossible to sift out. If you want the bigger pieces, you have to go up river, high into the mountains where the nuggets that are too heavy to be carried away in the current are deposited.

Of course, the higher in the mountains a person is, the greater are the hardships of being there.

The same is true in the spiritual life. The greatest treasures of Christianity can only be gleaned by being very close to the Lord. The problem is, it's a challenge to get there and once there you'll find that the world will bring hardships upon you.

Paul said any sufferings he endured in those higher elevations of the spiritual life could not be compared to the glory which would be revealed in him in heaven.

The gold that's available from a close walk with God is obvious worth the hardships of that spiritual life.

Marvin McKenzie
In the fields

Vacation and Services


I didn't grow up going on a lot of vacations per se. My dad was a professional rodeo cowboy and we went somewhere almost every weekend. Often if we weren't staying in the camper at a rodeo arena we were camping in it at a lake, fishing trout in the early mornings.

In my earlier years of ministry I modeled my family off times more like how I grew up. We didn't ever take a vacation as in a week or two unplugged and away. We did travel almost every month to a preachers' fellowship meeting and we always turned some portion of that trip into an adventure for our kids. We also camped a lot as Oregon's largest state park is just outside of Astoria, where we lived in the earliest days of our ministry.

Things changed when we moved twelve years ago to Puyallup. Bible Baptist offered a vacation package as a part of my benefits so we began modeling our down time a little more like how my wife grew up.

The first year was two full weeks out camping. We decided that was much too long. The next year was a week long trip to Lake Louise, Canada. It was a bit hurried, but the most significant challenge was attending church. We attended a good church Sunday morning and headed into Canada thinking we could find a church to attend where ever we stopped for the night. We stopped early on purpose so we could get cleaned up from traveling in time for church. What we found was that no church in town held a Sunday night service. I was even willing to attend an Episcopalian service if necessary. No open church whatsoever.

The next several years were no better. We went on an Alaska cruise one year. The timing was such that we left after the morning service so we missed church that evening and there was not church in Skagway, where we spent Wednesday so we missed that service too. Apparently a lot of preachers have no problem missing services to go on a cruise because a lot of them recommend cruising.

Another year we planned to take a train from Seattle to New York and back. I made reservations for a sleeper car. The whole vacation was going to be the train. Just ride it to New York and back (taking different routes each way). My (by then) adult children and their wives drove us to the train station. On the way one asked where we would stop for church. It was not until then that I realized that we would not be able to attend a single church service the entire way. My kids tried to justify their parents' lack of church that week but by the time we arrived at the train station I had come to the conclusion that I could not set that example for my kids. I canceled our trip and ate the cost.

This year we secluded ourselves in the North Cascade Mountains no more than one and a half hours from four Baptist Churches of like faith and practice. Still trouble attending church. It turned out that 
  • One is a church plant and does not yet have mid week services. 
  • Another advertised just a children's outreach for the mid-week (turns out their web site needs a little updating. They did have a preaching service on Wednesday.) 
  • Another held their mid week service on Tuesday instead of Wednesday. I know that many do Thursday instead.


Here is the thing, it's just about impossible to go on vacation and be faithful to worship in God's house. Oh, sure, almost every town has something that looks like a church but those with a little biblical discernment know that most things men call church are just that, called of men and not the Lord. Trouble is that some who have the Lord's authority are shirking their obligations. Church needs to be 
  • On a consistent time
  • Well advertised and 
  • Faithfully executed


Marvin McKenzie
In the fields

Buy the Boat

Life Is Short - Buy the Boat Recently, while traveling south on I-5, entering the Fife Washington area, I saw the brightly lit advertisement...