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.

MY FAITH LOOKS UP TO THEE

A monthly story on a hymn of the faith. 

At age 22, Ray Palmer was exhausted. As a child he was a bright student, but family finances meant he had to quit school at age 13 to work as a clerk in a Boston dry goods store. Still, he gave his work his best effort while getting spiritual nourishment at the Park Street Congregational Church. There, he accepted Christ and felt the call to become a minister. He was able to complete his education and was accepted to Yale.

It was an exhausting time of life for him as he juggled his clerk job, Yale classes, teaching at a New York City girl's school, and studying for the ministry. One night in 1830 in his rented room he read a German poem about a sinner kneeling before the cross. It moved him so much that he added several stanzas on his own. According to one biographer, he admitted that when he finished, he was moved to tears, especially with that poem's last lines: Oh, bear me safe above, a ransomed soul! He later copied the lyrics into a little leather-bound book he kept of private devotional thoughts. It was never his intention that someone else would read the poem that began, “My faith looks up to Thee, thou Lamb of Calvary, Savior Divine.”

Two years later, working on his doctorate in theology, he was visiting in Boston when he ran into an old friend, Lowell Mason, already prominent as a music teacher, prodigious composer, and music publisher. Mason was working on a compilation to be called “Spiritual Songs for Social Worship” and wondered if Palmer had written anything he could use. Though hesitant to share his very personal devotional reflection, Palmer pulled out his little devotional journal and showed Mason the lyrics he'd written.

Mason didn't hesitate. He stepped into a store where he got a piece of paper and a pencil to copy them. When Mason got home, he re-read the words and began writing a tune he named “Olivet.” Two days later, the friends ran into each other again on Boston's streets. Mason blurted, “Mr. Palmer, you may live many years and do many good things, but I think you will be best known to posterity as the author of 'My Faith Looks Up To Thee.'”

A few years later, in 1835, having earned his doctorate in theology, Palmer was ordained to the ministry in the Congregational Church. He held pastorates and church offices in Maine and New York. He was also a popular author of original poetry, hymns and translated hymn texts, publishing several volumes. Probably the best known of his translated works is “Jesus, Thou Joy of Loving Hearts,” originally written in Latin by Bernard of Clairvaux 800 years earlier.

Palmer lived to be 79. He and his wife were married over a half century before she died. When he passed away in 1887, after a succession of strokes, three of his ten children survived. We can be thankful that he didn't stay in his first vocation—as a clerk in a dry goods store!

The Vagle Brothers harmonize the hymn is this beautiful YouTube video:

My Faith Looks Up To Thee (Hymns with lyrics) - Bing video

PLUS OR MINUS

I keep this uplifting magnet (a friend's gift)
on a metal surface near my desk. 

When our land-line phone rang one ordinary morning, my "hello" was answered by three words: “I hate you!” After the initial shock, I recognized the voice. An awkward silence, then I replied, “I can tell this is a negative phone call, so I'm hanging up.” Within seconds the phone rang again. Guessing it was the same person with a history of this behavior, I chose to ignore the call rather than risk a frustrating conversation. But the caller had already wounded my spirit. I grabbed my car keys to do errands and get away from the phone. Tears came within the first block. Then, like a God-message, Biblical truths from an old hymn came to mind: “What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear.”

Years later, that hurtful memory resurfaced when I read David Seamands' Healing Grace: Let God Free You from the Performance Trap (Victor, 1988, p. 155). In one chapter he dealt with others' negative input in our lives—statements critical of our “being,” not of instructive corrections. In other words, put-downs that attack someone's character, like “I'm sick of you” or “You make me sick.” Or, as I heard, “I hate you.” In contrast are phrases like “I believe you can do this” or even “Thank you for helping me become my better self.” Psychologists who study “affirmation” have even come up with a formula for positive or negative strokes. It goes like this:

*A positive stroke for “doing” (something we did): one point.

*A positive stroke for “being” (what we are): ten points.

*A negative stroke for “doing”: minus ten points.

*A negative stroke for “being”: minus 100 points!

Yes, negative comments and put-downs are associated with a huge emotional debt. Negatives, Seamands wrote, “hurt us not simply on the outside, for our behavior, but they pierce right into the inside of us, where the concepts and feelings about ourselves originate.”

But I am blessed to also have affirming friends. I have saved some of their “blessing” notes reminding me that I am not what this other person claims. At times I considered tossing the notes—was it vain to keep them around?---but that inner voice said, “No, keep them, read them from time to time as a reminder that you are precious in God's sight.”

One used my name for an acrostic of positive qualities (see illustration at right--with its re-spelling of "generous"). Another wrote in an E-mail: “When I think of you, I think of a God- and people-loving woman: creative, musical, frugal, generous, intelligent, fun, funny, wise, scholar, widely-published and much more. When I think of you, I smile.” An older woman who took a writing class I taught handed me this note at the last session: “Your love for the Lord is right where I can see it.”

I share their notes to illustrate healing words. I also want my experience of pain and positives to show how words matter. All around us—especially, it seems, as a consequence of the fears and inconveniences of the pandemic-- are people who likely suffered recently from another's negative words. They need those positive strokes for “being” or “doing.” Your reaching-out might be the encouragement they need that day.

FLEETING

 

Tiny blue star-shaped flowers are the first to emerge in our flower beds as snow recedes. They last only a few days before withering. But during their short bloom time, they're like tiny encouragers as my outlook recovers from the cold, dark winter. Commonly called “Glory of the Snow,” their more formal name is chionadoxa.

As I walk by them on my way to and from our home, noticing them bloom and wither, I'm reminded of this word: fleeting.

That word takes me back to my college days as an English major. I slogged through my five-credit “Shakespeare” class, analyzing such quotes as this from Macbeth: “Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and is heard no more!”

The phrase “hour upon the stage” reminds me of what the apostle James said about people who set up “life plans” for where they'll live and what they'll do to make lots of money during their lifetimes. James dumped cold water on their “hour-on-the-stage” plans with this observation: “Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a while and then vanishes” (James 4:14).

God didn't create people with limited life spans to just play-act. He fashioned us with purpose. James added: “Instead you ought to say, 'If this is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that'” (4:15). A similar message came from Moses, who spent decades drilling the message “obey God” into a huge pack of wandering former slaves: “Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12).

Sometimes, as in these past months of COVID-19 restrictions, life seemed to drag from day to day. But the reality is that life is short, a blip on eternity's screen. My time to “bloom” for Jesus is very, very short. My place to bloom is very ordinary, like that patch of cold soil where the “Glory of the Snow” emerges for a few days. But He sees me. And He cares. More important—contrary to the Shakespearian character with a fatalistic “heard no more” attitude—I matter to God for eternity!