DEER, ME!

I'd been running errands and came to a stop sign just around the corner from our home...and looked straight at ten deer just yards away. Well, hello! I thought. Behind them was a large empty lot full of juicy spring grass. They must have been waiting for some straggler friends to join them in this feast. By the time I got home, grabbed a camera, and walked back to the lot, they'd galloped to the end of it, a few hundred feet away. Returning home, I peeked over our back fence (which borders the lot) and spotted this deer closer to my home tugging leaves off a tree. With its super-sized ears and keen hearing, it heard my cautious steps and froze.

Whenever I see deer, I think of passages like Psalm 42:1 (“As the deer pants for the waters, so my soul pants for you, O God”) and Habakkuk 3:17 (“He makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to go on the heights”). In arid central Washington state, where I live, big, sturdy deer sometimes come down into town for food and water from their natural habitat in the arid, high-desert hills surrounding our valley. Even though Palestine's deer differ genetically from our Western America deer, they share the same danger of dehydration. They're a universal illustration of Christians in need of spiritual refreshment from God's Word, the “River of Life.”

Commentators say the deer in the Habakkuk passage (“hind” in King James) is a type of gazelle that's swift and sure-footed in rough terrain. In running, it can place the back feet exactly where its front feet just “exited,” giving it speed and stability. It's known for its skill in scaling unusually difficult terrain to escape predators. Does that remind you of another Biblical principle?

No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it. (1 Corinthians 10:13)

But then, like a warning about “rough spiritual terrain ahead,” the previous verse (v. 12) says: “If you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don't fall!”

We won't see deer in that lot anymore. The next week, huge earth-moving machines moved in to turn the lot into a community of 32 townhouses. This photo was taken at the same place just ten days after a friendly deer stared at me. Two thoughts came to me: that the things that matter—our relationship with God—can't be knocked down by a diesel-run mega-machine. And also that my “close encounter” with deer for the last time in that lot was a gift from the Creator.

SATISFIED (Psalm 63)

Where I live is considered "high desert" but we're blessed by 

life-sustaining rivers. What David would have done for this!

Part of an ongoing series on the 48 psalms recommended for "down times" by counselor/pastor David Seamands (author of Healing of Damaged Emotions).

When I’m feeling down, I tend to go to certain psalms for comfort and instruction.  This is one.  In my Bible, it’s full of circles, connecting lines, and notes as I’ve thought about it, prayed through it, and feasted on it, as verse 5 suggests:

My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods; 

With singing lips my mouth will praise you.

However, in returning with study aids to this psalm, I realized what I thought was “feasting” was just nibbling at the corners. I’d ignored the “plate” on which its truths were served, described in the inscription:

A psalm of David. When he was in the desert of Judah.

This time he wasn’t fleeing mad King Saul, but his own son, Absalom, usurping his father’s crown.  Now David was in the most obscure place he could find.  He’d gone from the palace to the pits—the hot, scruffy, dirty, dry desert. No wonder the psalm opens with images of thirst:

O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you;

My soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you,

In a dry and dreary land where there is no water.

Both his body and soul cried out in desperation. But more than real water, he wanted spiritual refreshment.

THROUGH THE NIGHT

I find that incredible.  Here he hides—filthy, physically spent, emotionally on edge.  The night comes and the darkness disguises his whereabouts.  But instead of the enemy, he thinks about his God. Verse 6 says that while on his bed (likely little more than a heavy cloak) he thinks about God through the “watches of the night.” In Jewish culture, those were the hours of sunset to 10 p.m., then 10 p.m. to 2 a.m., and then 2 a.m. to sunrise. The implication is that whenever he woke—whatever “watch”—he used that dark, lonely time to think about God as his helper and upholder.

I “get” that.  As much as I crave a good night’s sleep, there have been many nights when I’m awakened at what would be the second or third watch. My first thoughts are of an individual who has caused me much grief.  Rather than toss and turn, I get up and go to my rocker where I keep my Bible and devotional materials.  Often a verse cited in a devotional will take me to scriptures that speak encouragement to me.  Or, God will give me a nudge to read a certain psalm or chapter of Proverbs.  Then, in the darkness, I pray for this troubled person.

This psalm also challenges me to go beyond petitioning God on behalf of this person. David also simply worships God for who He is.

Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you,

I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands.

My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods; with singing lips my mouth will praise you. (vv. 3-5)

At times I reach down for the hymnal I keep by that chair and read through some lyrics.  Singing aloud would wake my spouse, so I sing in my soul, imagining myself as singing “in the shadow of [God’s] wings” (v. 7).

The psalm ends on a harsh note of retribution against David’s enemies.  I understand that in the historical context of a royal revolt.  But my heart goes back to the first verse and its declaration, “You are my God, earnestly I seek you, my soul thirsts for you.”  Those words help me invite into my heart the One who declared Himself to be the Living water (John 4:13-14), ready to refresh and encourage me.

Pouring chocolate

A series inspired by sights in Kauai.
Heavy rainfall had turned the usually white-frothed Wailua Falls, near the east coast of Kauai, into thrashing muddy flood.  Still, it was beautiful and worthy of its “must visit” rating as we chose what to see in Kauai.  Most sources say it falls 140 feet; some claim it’s 173 high, others, less than 100 feet.  Despite warnings of safety, some dare to swim in its pool.  In ancient days, Hawaiian men would jump from the top of the falls to prove their manhood.  Today’s that illegal because of the danger.

In contrast to the roar and volume of the Wailua Falls, I recalled my study a few years ago of the water-pouring ceremony associated with “Feast of Tabernacles” in ancient Jerusalem.  Priests would process to the city’s “Pool of Siloam,” a reservoir created in King Hezekiah’s time, holding water brought 1,780 feet through a conduit hewn from rock from a small spring outside the city.  One day Jesus watched the priests go through their ritual, then shocked everybody by saying with a loud voice, “If a man is thirsty, let him come to me and drink.  Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.”  The “living water” to which He referred, would be the Holy Spirit, to be poured out in magnificence at Pentecost to help Christ-followers (who include us today) to live out their faith with refreshing power. An old hymn by Horatius Bonar (1808-1889), Scottish preacher and hymn-writer, has one stanza that speaks of this:

I heard the voice of Jesus say, ‘Behold, I freely give
The living water-- thirsty one, Stoop down and drink, and live.”
I came to Jesus, and I drank of that life-giving stream;
My thirst was quenched, my soul revived, And now I live in Him.

This “living water” is what keeps us going when life sends us reeling with its muddy flows of destruction and disappointment.  In recent weeks, as I’ve prayed for troubled loved ones, another hymn has flowed through my heart like a life-giving, cleansing stream.  At times, just a few words of the chorus helped to settle my heart and trust God again:

Jesus, Jesus, how I trust Him, How I’ve proved Him o’er and o’er!
Jesus, Jesus, precious Jesus! O for grace to trust Him more.

Hymn books name the lyric’s authors as Louisa Stead, who penned the entire verse in 1882. Born in England, she became a Christian at age nine and as a teenager felt the call to mission work. A revival meeting at Urbana, Ohio, confirmed that on her heart. But when she applied to go to China, the mission board felt her health was too fragile.  She married and had a little girl. But when her daughter was about four, her husband drowned trying to save someone.  Muddy waters!  But shortly after, she and her little girl sailed to mission work in South Africa! Widowed, alone, in a foreign culture—that’s when she wrote these lyrics. During her fifteen years there, she married again, but poor health meant a return to America where her second husband pastored a Methodist Church.  By 1900, her health restored, they returned to Africa, this time to Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) as missionaries!  She retired in 1911 (about age 61) and died six years later. 

Of her last work in Rhodesia, she wrote in her journal, “In connection with this whole mission there are glorious possibilities. One cannot in the face of peculiar difficulties help saying, ‘Who is sufficient for these things?’ But with simple confidence and trust we may and do say, ‘Our sufficiency is of God.’”

Louisa Stead could have allowed her faith to be drowned in the floods of disappointment and a spouse’s death. But she trusted in Jesus, and “proved Him o’er and o’er,” living in the power of His living water.

Thirsty

Close to the middle of this photo are deer drinking in the river.

“I see some deer,” my husband exclaimed as he pulled our car off the canyon road. We were about 80 miles from home, enjoying the autumn colors on a lesser-traveled road. Climbing over a guard rail, we stood on a ledge hundreds of feet away from four deer drinking the chilly river water. They soon detected human presence, and bounded back up the hill into their hiding places.

The opening words to Psalm 42 came to mind: “As the deer pants for streams of waters, so my soul pants for you, O God.” I recalled explaining that psalm to a group of women years ago. One, her face chiseled by her hard life before she came to Christ, said, “I can relate to thirsting for God.”

The Hebrew word that we translate “pant” is arag and this is its only use in the Bible. It also means “to long for.” I can understand the thirst and panting that compels an animal to find water. I once had two fawns in my house (aka long-legged young teens) who became substitute paper carriers for a huge route serving more than a hundred customers. Of course, it was summer’s most blistering week and Mom had to come along as driver. I made sure we all filled our water bottles before going to the paper drop-off point, where we sat in the meager shade outside the car. Unfortunately, that was next to the locked-up swimming pool of a manufactured home community. I shot a mom’s glance that said, “Don’t even think about climbing the fence for a few cannonballs while we wait.”

After an hour, the water bottles were drained and my fawns were gasping, “I’m d-y-i-n-g” (which made me think of a cowboy song that includes a lot of yippee-yi-yoos). Finally, I decided to drive us home to refill the water bottles and call the newspaper about our tardy delivery. “Sorry, the press broke down,” the harried circulation assistant said. “I don’t know when your bundles will be delivered. You’ll just have to stay at the dropoff point.” So back we went to wait. My two fawns were about to drop out of this. Yes, the papers did eventually come and we sweated through the route in record time. Home again, they collapsed with more long drinks of water...while I had to figure out dinner. (How about ice cube soup?)

Whether a blistering summer afternoon, or a chilly autumn morning, thirst is a normal part of our creation. It’s also a symbol of our longing to be refreshed and satisfied by the One who created us. That’s why, as we drove away from watching the deer, I thought of other scriptures that speak of spiritual thirst:
“He satisfies the thirsty.” (Psalm 107:9)
“Come, all you who are thirsty.” (Isaiah 55:1)
“If a man is thirsty, let him come to me and drink.” (John 7:37)
“Whoever is thirsty, let him come.” (Revelation 22:17)

We hear so much today about the “WWW,” the world-wide web. It precedes the internet addresses of sites like mine. But we also need to be life-long students of the Bible’s “world-wide word webs,” discovering how even single words in this God-inspired book are interconnected in amazing ways. When we arag after God—longing for, even panting for Him--He promises to satisfy that thirst in the deepest part of who we are.