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.