Deer - By Dan Ryan

Monday, 17. September 2007 by Dan Ryan

Last Tuesday, being the first crisp afternoon in 5 months, I couldn’t help myself. I had to sneak in a quick 9 holes at Lake of the Woods Golf Course.
I teed off around 6:00, right as the temps were dipping into the upper 50’s.  After sinking a par putt on the 3rd hole, something absolutely bizarre happened to me.
In my race against the sun, I turned and began to run to the 4th tee.  As I did so, a deer bounded out of the woods (not unusual) and proceeded to run straight at me (highly unusual).  It was the highest-stakes game of chicken I’ve ever experienced.  While I’m happy to report the doe blinked first, she still stopped near the tee, watched me tee off and, at a distance of about 15 yards, and walked almost all the way up the 4th hole with me.  While not quite what I always envisioned, I had finally golfed in front of my very own gallery. 
Mentally, I tried to compartmentalize the following dilemma on my way to the green.  Here we have one of the most elusive creatures on this planet.  Mind you, the pursuit of deer has driven grown men to rise hours before the sun, dress like trees, spray themselves with deer urine (quick tangent: have any of you ever stopped to wonder exactly how they acquire this?) and sit noiselessly for hours lest they scare off a deer who may be approaching from 100+ yards in the distance.
Yet here I was, irons clanking as I noisily ran to the tee, when this doe nonchalantly meandered up to within 10 feet of me, stopped and stared innocently at what I was doing.  Not a coincidence.  Couldn’t be.  As I played on that night, I thought about that doe.  And while I couldn’t explain her behavior, I did determine that I shared more in common with this deer than met the eye…

You see, sometimes I can be ultra-aware of my shortcomings.  At others times, however, I can be inexplicably oblivious.  Friends, we carry around some awfully subtle flaws.  Well, at least they’re subtle to us…  Independence rather than God-dependence.  Self-centeredness.  Pride.  White lies.  But ignorance is bliss, isn’t it?
I’m not so sure.  Let’s put it this way: wouldn’t you want to know if you were offending someone or dragging them down in some way?  Yeah, of course, we all would.  Yet what would you say the odds are that you might have recently (inadvertently) been the cause of someone else’s stumble? 
And maybe you aren’t even aware of it.  After all, Jesus often speaks to the difficulties of self-awareness.

“Woe to you, because you are like unmarked graves, which men walk over without knowing it.”—Luke 11:44

Now if we’re not careful here, we speed right on by a critical implication in Jesus’ words: back then, most graves were marked.
As the Jewish scientists of the day had yet to harness the illuminating powers of neon, most proper graves were whitewashed instead, all in the name of increased nighttime visibility.  What’s the big deal, you ask?  Well, people couldn’t even step on a grave; and if you did step on a grave, bam—you were unclean for the next 7 days (and you thought the final stretch of a tense game of Minesweeper was pressure).  So a little dirt could not only take away the whitewash, it could also deeply impact those who came into contact with it, too.
Is there something I’m doing—or not doing—now that is causing me or others to stumble?  Without even being aware of it?  Don’t try to answer that, because if you think about it, you can’t very well answer it if you’re not even aware of the fault in the first place!  If that sounds defeatist, I have some uplifting news for us.  Because as I see it, this is where we carry a distinct advantage over our less-than-aware deer: we can ask each other if that’s the case.
Let’s get practical here. Here are 3 ideas we can consider to increase our awareness:
1)    When’s the last time I sat down with God and we both examined my character together?
2)    Have I taken advantage of the gift (yes, gift) of a trustworthy friend who can hold me accountable?
3)    (And let me just preface this final idea by saying I have found it to be annoyingly true over and over in my life) I dare you to take a look at the most frustrating traits in the people around you.  Take a mental inventory here, and I’m talking the flaws that really bother you. Then ask yourself if you have acted the same way lately. If you’re like me, it’s uncanny.if
My theory has always been it would be awfully pricey for God to build and distribute millions of mirrors for us to hold up to our face in those moments.  So oftentimes, He opts to use others as “mirrors” to show us our shortcomings instead.
 

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the beam in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when you yourself fail to see the beam in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the beam out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”                                                                                                                    —Luke 6:41-42

Many of you know that for the better part of His first 30 years here on earth, Jesus was carpenter by day, budding Savior of the world by night.  So did you catch all of His woodworking metaphor?  I wonder how that speck of sawdust got in our brother’s eye in the first place.  Could it have been from our beam?
Sometimes we’re aware of our faults. Sometimes we’re not.  If a deer lets their guard down and loses their heightened awareness, they have an awful lot to lose in the coming months.
You and I are no different.  We are hunted by an enemy who wishes to camouflage our sin.  Except he’s not limited by a particular season.  So what will you do to fight back?