Deer Hunting

Church was wonderful Sunday. None of the people came up repeatedly telling us they were sorry for our loss (maybe they read my blog). When we asked for prayer for our family we got a sort of collective "I am so sorry" and that was it. We were then allowed to enjoy the service and worship without carrying a burden of sorrow.

Things are better this week. It is a cloudy, rainy day which would depress most people, but the weather has been warm and all the frogs are "singing". My granddaughter from the city who lives with the bump, bump, bump of some one's "super woofer" either next door or traveling down the street, calls it noise, but I like to call it singing. If you sit and listen long enough, it is so soothing and relaxing it lets you forget for a time that there is anything wrong in the world.

You know, around here "deer hunting" takes on a whole new meaning. There are lots of meadows, ponds, harvested fields, and woods as you go down the road. Last year alone there were 120 "accidents" that involved a car and a deer (or two). The first year I lived here I was in the middle of town on a road bordered by two undeveloped pieces of land and I bagged my first deer with a 2000 gray Dodge Stratus, or rather he bagged me. The deer died, the deputy who came to make the report took it to process it, and it cost my insurance $3000 to fix my front end. The second deer that season, was a HUGE buck that came out of nowhere when I was about a mile from my house (they say most accidents happen within a mile of your home). Fortunately, this was not a head on collision. I swerved and he lost half his "rack" (horns for you city people) and I lost my passenger side rear view mirror. As I got out of my car to assess the damage, a neighbor pulled up to ask if I was all right. I told him yes and told him my "deer hunting" story. His response was, "I need to take you deer hunting." When I explained it was the gray car he replied," Then I need to take your car hunting." Such sympathy kind of makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside doesn't it? By the way, that deer owes me. I saved his life by ruining his rack. And he never even said thank you or returned my rear view mirror!

So I was ready when my husband called last Tuesday to tell me he had hit a deer or rather the deer had hit him. He was about 5 or 6 miles down our road when a doe came out of the woods, jumped a fence and hit the passenger side of his gray truck (are we seeing a pattern here?). She bent the door so it wouldn't open and really messed up the back quarter panel. We figure the insurance is out about $2000 on this one. And the doe? I am afraid she got the worst end of her crash landing. She ran about as far as the meadow before she fell. The sheriff's deputy had to shoot her to keep her from lying there suffering.

One thing I have noticed with all these deer hunting all us humans is that it always happens suddenly. Most of the time, you never even see them coming and then there is the crash and the damage. Kind of the way our loss came to us last week- unexpected, sudden, and damaging. But God in His Word tells us part of the reason these things happen. Paul in writing the Corinthian church for the second time( I often wonder if they were slow learners) says in Chapter 1 verse 7, "So our hope for you is secure in the knowledge that you share the encouragement we receive, no less the sufferings we bear."

It seems to me that if there were no "bad things" that happened in our lives, then how would we recognize the good things? If we did not sin, how would we know the joy of salvation- a joy even the angels cannot feel. God does not "cause" the bad things to happen. Those are the product of either our own sin or a fallen world (yes, stuff happens). And He knows in advance that the bad things are going to happen. But Paul is saying that if nothing bad ever happens to you so that you can encourage someone else, then you have no hope. As bad as the bad things are, I think I would rather have the joy of being able to encourage someone and the security of hope.

So when the deer are hunting you, remember that it won't last forever (in "God's time" it is barely a blink of the eye), it will get "fixed" by God; you may not like how He fixes it, but He will fix it ; and you will be able to go on with your life with the hope that only God can give. So don't let the deer get you down, you'll be hunting them next November!