PRIORITIES

It's late August, and we're going through our annual late-summer “heat waves” with 100-degree temperatures. I'm grateful for today's “air conditioners,” recalling my younger years in stuffy, low-budget rental apartments without “A/C.” Instead, a noisy box fan helped move air so I didn't sizzle like bacon on a hot pan.

Our current blistering-hot days find me thinking of a psalm in which a deer's thirst becomes a spiritual analogy. You probably know the one, which starts:
As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God.My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God? (Ps.42:1-2)

This bold, young deer visited the back yard
in late winter, obviously hungry (those
are rose bushes behind him--ouch!)

If you can remember back to the 1970s to the emergence of contemporary Bible choruses (many out of the Southern California “Maranatha!” ministries), you're probably humming that chorus. It's been running through my mind, too, as I go about my tasks. I recall how this psalm reflected a challenging time in David's life. His comfort and prestige were stripped away, and he was enduring the hard, hot life of hiding in the desert from insane, murder-intending King Saul. Food and water were precious and rare. Yet David found his hope and practical supply in God: The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and I am helped. (Psalm 28:7)

I suspect that Psalm 42, with its downcast tone (like verse 3: “My tears have been my food day and night”) isn't apt to inspire upbeat “life verses.” The ticking away of days and years has its hard spots, and it's easy to think sadly about past “Glory Years.” Maybe we had more friends. Respect from others. A secure job we enjoyed. Health. A place to live which brought us comfort and happiness. A satisfying purpose for living. Or maybe a measure of fame.

Certainly “fame” was anticipated for Scotsman Eric Liddell, whose amazing athletic achievements were portrayed in the 1981 film “Chariots of Fire.” He was predicted to win the 100-meter race in the 1924 Olympics. But Liddell, a devout Christian who aspired to be a missionary, withdrew when he learned the race's heats would be held on a Sunday. Instead, he switched to the more grueling 400-meter race during the week.

In the movie script, Liddell was handed a note just before the race. Reportedly from his team's masseur, it read: “In the old book it says, he that honors me I will honor. Wishing you the best success always. 1 Samuel 2:30.” Despite the extra strain for him to attempt a race four times his “trained” length, Liddell won with an Olympic record of 47.8 seconds. It would stand until the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

From sports fame he moved on to mission work in China, dying there of an undiagnosed brain tumor in his 43^rd year. But his dedication to Christ's cause made a difference. Of course, he was asked “post-Olympics” if he regretted leaving behind his Olympic fame for mission service. He replied: “It's natural for a chap to think over all that sometimes, but I'm glad I'm at the work I'm engaged in now. A fellow's life counts for far more at this than the other.”

Powerful words about priorities! The Lord was Liddell's strength and shield. And even decades after his death, Liddell's passion for Christ still inspires.
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Enjoy these links connected to Liddell's story. This one presents the “deer” song: Bing Videos
Then, here is the movie reenactment of Liddell's Olympic race (skip the preceding ads): Bing Videos

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.

This fragile grass

My husband is a substitute teacher, and one recent snowy day he went to the tiny rural school at Palisades, about a 40-minute drive from here. It’s at the end of a narrow coulee carved long ago in the Ice Age. Part of the coulee has been scrubbed of sagebrush for alfalfa fields and orchards. Coming home from teaching, he passed dozens of deer foraging where they could. Going back up there the other day, we counted probably five dozen, chewing what they could out of the frozen turf.

I’d been thinking a lot about Psalm 90 recently, and those hungry deer reminded me of verse 5: “You sweep men away in the sleep of death; they are like the new grass of the morning—though in the morning it springs up new, by evening it is dry and withered.”

Talk about a downer verse! A little background may help. This is the only song by Moses included in the book of Psalms. Though he wrote other songs (like the epic one in Deuteronomy 32), this one must have been significant enough to pick for an ancient hymnal largely featuring the songs of King David.

We’re not told when he wrote it, but I imagine it was near the end of his life as the Israelites finished forty years of wandering before entering the Promised Land. Moses wouldn’t go with them, a consequence of dishonoring God with a temper tantrum at Meribah (Numbers 20). Plus, as judgment on unbelief and cowardice after spies checked out Canaan, all but two who left Egypt (the believing spies, Joshua and Caleb) would miss out on the Promised Land. Thousands of graves dotted the landscape of their wanderings around the Sinai. Now only descendants remained.

If I were in Moses’ sandals, I probably would have said this, too: “All our days pass away under your wrath: we finish our years with a moan” (v. 9).

Psalm 90 has been on my mind in part because of people we care about “finishing their years.” In some cases, it’s been when they’re too young¸ like a talented violinist who befriended my daughter at college. She married a widower with child, had two more children with him, and is now gone in her thirties—of colon cancer. A friend our age is slipping away with ALS. Another couple we know nearly lost their son to a dying heart until a heart transplant gave him extra years. He married, and last week his wife (age 36) had her life turned upside down by strokes.

Three weeks ago I helped an older friend with Alzheimer’s navigate the curb to a car; her funeral is Friday. This week someone died as a result of an accident barely a block away in early December. I remember coming home at dusk after my walk and seeing the red lights of emergency vehicles just beyond my street. A 79-year-old man who lived alone in a little cottage was struck when he jay-walked across the street. He was walking home from the grocery store, as he had done hundreds of times—sometimes nodding to my “hi” when we passed. The police markers of where he landed reminded me how life can change in an instant. I could sing a duet with Moses: “Relent, O Lord! How long will it be? Have compassion on your servants!” (v. 13).

Psalm 90 has this discouraging “you-live-and-then-you-die” tone to it—unless you hear the “Hallelujah Chorus” ringing behind stanzas like this: “Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love, that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days” (v. 14). In this I hear echoes of the Westminster confession: “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.”

Moses would have had a different song if he knew what we now know: that Jesus changes things. And that includes death. Our earthly bodies may be as grass, vulnerable to the day’s heat and dryness (or to the nibbling of starved deer). But Christ has “destroyed death and has brought life and immorality to light through the gospel” (2 Timothy 1:10). We have the assurance that “to live is Christ and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21) and being with Him in Heaven will be better by far (v. 23).

Moses almost got it all correct. “May the favor of the Lord our God rest upon us,” he wrote (90:17)—and indeed it does, for those who believe in Christ, and who express that through growing love and service in His name, for however many days allotted on this planet. And then, for God’s children—better by far!