We can see it in the prophet Elijah, standing alone before a wicked king, speaking the Word of the Lord.  We can hear it in Col. J.H. Patterson's description that "the silence of an African jungle on a dark night needs to be experienced to be realised; it is most impressive, especially when one is absolutely alone and isolated from one's fellow creatures, as [he] was then."  We can see it in eighty-five year-old Caleb coming to Joshua for his blessing on his venture into the wild hill country, which he subsequently took and settled in.  We respond to it ourselves, when we go out into the wild in the hope of bringing back meat that we hunted.  H. Rider Haggard spoke of it through his aged hero Allan Quatermain when he resolved to "go away from this place where [he] lived idly and at ease, back again to the wild..."  We were raised on its stories, stories of men like Davy Crockett who spurned the melodrama and the politics of their societies, and instead pushed into the frontier.  John Wayne made a living tapping into it. A man, any man and every man, needs to know experientially that in a world far bigger than he is, he can stand.  He needs to know that he has been in a place where he held onto nothing but the hand of Almighty God, and stood.  We live in a world that scorns and scoffs at real men.  That's alright.  Neither did the cultures around these men always appreciate them.  We'll be alone in excellent company.

Raise your boys to be men.  Raise them on the Word of God, and on the stories of real men.  Show them how to savor the life that the Lord has called them to, how to love one woman for life, how to work, how to hurt, how to know what to do, how to keep from panic, how to walk humbly with their God.

Patterson, John Henry. The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures. London: MacMillan and, Limited, 1908. Print.

Haggard, H. Rider. Allan Quatermain. London: Penguin Group, 1990. Print.